THEOSOPHY 

AND  THE  THEOSOPHICAL  SOCIETY 


aliforni 

jional 

ility 


ANNIE 
BESANT 


UNIVERSITY  of  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 
LIBRARY 


Theosophy 

and  the 

Theosophical  Society 


By 

ANNIE   BESANT 


Four  Lectures  delivered  at  the  Thirty-seventh 

Annual  Convention  of  the  Theosophical 

Society  at  Adyar,  on  December 

27th,   28th,   29th  and 

30th,  1912 


THEOSOPHICAL  PUBLISHING   HOUSE 
ADYAR,  MADRAS,  INDIA 

116  S.  Michigan  Ave., 

CHICAGO,  ILL.,  U.S.A. 

1913 


110569 


Copyright  by  the 

Theosophical  Publishing  House 

1913 


~B  P 
6>3 

T  * 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Theosophy  or  Paravidya i 

Theosophy  the  Open  Road  to  the  Masters 24 

Theosophy  the  Root  of  All  Religions 46 

The  Theosophical   Society,   Its  Meaning,   Pur- 
pose,  and  Functions Jl 


THEOSOPHY  OR  PARAVIDYA 

LECTURE  I 
FRIENDS  : 

The  four  lectures  which  are  to  be  delivered 
here  during  the  thirty-seventh  Anniversary  of  the 
Theosophical  Society  are  intended  to  place  before  the 
public  certain  views  as  to  the  meaning  of  Theosophy, 
as  to  the  work  of  the  Theosophical  Society.  Those 
of  you  who  have  had  a  programme  will  have  seen 
that  we  begin  to-day  with  the  declaration  that 
Theosophy  is  the  Supreme  Knowledge,  the  Para- 
vidya.  Then  to-morrow  I  am  to  speak  of  it  as 
the  Open  Road  to  the  Masters,  the  great  Teachers 
of  the  WISDOM.  On  Sunday  it  is  to  be  considered 
as  the  Root  of  all  the  great  Religions.  And  lastly, 
on  Monday,  the  Meaning,  the  Purpose,  the  Func- 
tions of  the  Theosophical  Society. 

Let  me  say  at  the  very  outset  that  while  I  shall 
try  to  put  before  you  as  well  as  I  can  that  which 
I  believe  to  be  true,  no  word  I  utter,  no  statement 
I  make,  is  binding  on,  must,  or  ought  to,  be  accepted 
by  any  member  of  the  Theosophical  Society.  The 
Society  has  no  tenets,  it  has  no  beliefs  that  are 
binding  on  its  'members.  The  opinions  of  the 
President  of  the  Society  have  no  more  authority 
within  that  body  than  the  opinions  of  the  lowliest 
member  who  is  a  Fellow  of  the  Theosophical  So- 

1 


2  Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

ciety.  We  admit  no  authority  save  that  of  wisdom, 
and  every  man  must  see  the  wisdom  for  himself. 
None  other  can  reveal  it  to  him;  none  other  can 
walk  for  him  along  the  path  to  realization. 

It  is  written  in  a  Hebrew  Scripture  that  no  man 
may  deliver  his  brother  nor  make  agreement  unto 
God  for  him ;  for  between  the  supreme  Spirit  who 
is  God  and  the  fragment  of  that  Spirit  who  is  man 
there  is  no  intermediary,  there  is  none  with  the 
right  to  dictate.  And  so  in  our  Society,  while  we 
seek  the  truth,  we  bid  every  member  seek  it  and 
find  it  for  himself;  for  truth  is  only  truth  when 
the  intellect  can  perceive  it;  only  then  is  it  truth 
to  any  individual  man ;  and  the  condition  of  know- 
ing the  truth,  of  seeing  the  truth,  is  to  develop 
to  the  point  whence  the  truth  is  visible.  The 
moment  you  see  it,  you  must  believe  it;  until  you 
see  it,  you  ought  not  to  say  that  you  know  it. 
Hence  the  perfect  freedom  of  our  Society,  the 
absence  of  all  authority  exercised  over  the  minds 
of  its  members. 

On  the  other  hand  Theosophy,  while  not  binding 
for  acceptance  on  any  member,  is  a  great  Truth, 
and,  secondarily,  a  body  of  truths  that  men  may 
study,  accept  or  reject  according  to  their  knowledge. 
And  Theosophy  in  its  primary  meaning,  Divine 
Wisdom,  is  the  Brahmavidya,  the  Atmavidya,  the 
Paravidya.1  Under  any  of  these  names  it  is  known 

*The  Science  of  the  Eternal,  the  Science  of  the  Self,  the 
Supreme  Science. 


Theosophy  or  Paravidya  3 

to  the  readers  of  the  ancient  Hindu  books,  and  it 
is  that  knowledge,  the  highest  knowledge,  which 
I  would  strive,  however  feebly,  to  set  before  you 
in  these  days  of  our  study. 

One  of  the  two  real  Founders  of  the  Theosophical 
Society,  known  in  Mr.  Sinnett's  book,  The  Occult 
World,  under  the  initials  of  K.  H.,  said  that  it 
was  the  mission  of  the  Theosophical  Society  to 
bring  the  western  nations  to  drink  at  the  pure 
wells  of  Aryan  knowledge.  Under  that  name  it 
is  evident  that  the  Master  was  alluding  to  that 
great  treasure  of  Wisdom  given  to  the  root  stock 
of  the  Aryan  race,  brought  down  by  it  into  India, 
spread  throughout  India  by  that  greatest  son  of 
India,  Vyasa,  who,  later,  was  the  Lord  Gautama 
the  Buddha. 

In  these  ancient  faiths,  Hinduism  and  Buddhism, 
together  with  that  more  fragmentary  teaching  which 
is  all  that  has  come  down  to  us  from  the  great 
Prophet  of  the  third,  or  Iranian,  sub-race — in  these 
you  have  declared  this  Divine  Wisdom  with  a  ful- 
ness and  particularity  which  you  do  not  find  in 
the  younger  faiths,  and  that  for  a  reason;  because 
those  younger  faiths — the  faiths  of  Christianity 
and  of  Islam — came  into  a  world  in  which  the 
supreme  verities  had  long  been  declared  and  in 
which  they  were  the  common  heritage  of  the  whole 
of  the  fifth  Root  Race.  Hence  the  Christ  and  the 
Prophet  Muhammad  gave  more  especially  to  Their 
followers  lessons  that  were  not  emphasized  so  much 


4          Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

in  the  earlier  religions,  lessons  intended  more  for 
practice  than  for  philosophy,  as  a  guide  to  conduct 
more  than  as  an  illumination  of  the  mind.  For 
the  illumination  was  present  in  the  world  for  all 
who  would  to  share  it,  and  what  the  world  of 
the  young  West  wanted  was  a  practical  guide  to 
life,  and  those  great  lessons  of  individuality  and 
self-sacrifice  which  are  the  special  glory  of  the 
Christian  faith.  Hence  the  command  to  lead  these 
to  drink  at  those  pure  wells  of  Wisdom  which 
belong  to  them  as  much  as  they  belong  to  you; 
for  they  also  are  children  of  the  Aryan  Race, 
they  also  are  descendants  of  Vaivasvata  Manu, 
and  over  them  His  protecting  hand  is  spread  as 
much  as  over  the  elder  part  of  the  Race.  In  taking 
that  treasure  of  Wisdom  westwards,  we  are  only 
carrying  it  from  the  family  house  to  the  younger 
children  who  have  colonised  the  outer  world;  we 
are  not  bringing  to  them  what  is  not  theirs,  but 
family  treasures  to  which  they  have  a  right;  for 
those  heirlooms  belong  to  the  younger  as  well  as 
to  the  elder,  and  they  may  claim  the  right  to  wear 
them  as  much  as  any  dweller  in  India,  in  Burma, 
or  in  any  other  of  the  northern  and  eastern  lands. 
Let  us  now  for  a  moment  consider  three  words 
that  we  find  in  one  of  the  old  books,  the  Brahma- 
sutras.  It  is  written  therein:  "Brahman  is  bliss." 
"The  ETERNAL  is  bliss."  To  some  extent,  if  you 
think,  you  will  find  that  that  fact — for  you  are 
a  part  of  Brahman — that  that  fact  is  testified 


Theosophy  or  Paravidya  5 

to  you  by  your  own  experience,  if  only  you  try 
to  realize  the  meaning  of  what  you  feel.  Does 
not  every  one  of  you,  when  some  sorrow  falls 
upon  you,  ask:  "Why  has  this  sorrow  come?" 
Do  you  often  ask  the  same  question  when  some 
unexpected  happiness  falls  to  your  lot,  or  do  you 
not  take  the  happiness  for  granted?  Do  you  not 
feel  that  in  the  happiness  you  have  that  which  is 
your  right?  Do  you  not  expect  to  be  happy,  and 
do  you  not  only  question  when  unhappiness  is  your 
lot?  "What  have  I  done  to  deserve  this?"  you 
say  indignantly  when  a  sorrow  strikes  you.  "What 
have  I  done  to  deserve  this?"  do  you  say  when 
joy  shines  on  you?  "Oh,  that  is  mine  because  I 
am  a  human  being,  and  joy  is  my  natural  atmos- 
phere." 

You  are  quite  right.  That  instinctive  feeling 
that  you  have  a  right  to  joy,  and  that  sorrow  has 
to  be  accounted  for,  wells  up  from  the  depths  of 
the  divine  Spirit  within  you,  who  knows  that  he 
is  bliss  and  knows  naught  of  sorrow  and  pain. 
But  when  you  look  out  into  the  world,  and,  in- 
stead of  feeling,  begin  to  reason,  ah!  then  you 
begin  to  question  the  truth  of  this  great  saying 
that  Brahman  is  bliss.  You  look  out  upon  the 
fields  and  the  woods  around  you  and  you  see  the 
vast  mass  of  sub-human  consciousness;  you  see 
one  animal  preying  upon  another ;  you  see  the  leop- 
ard springing  upon  the  back  of  the  spotted  deer; 
you  see  the  boa-constrictor  winding  himself  around 


6          Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

the  animal  passing  beneath  his  tree,  and  crushing 
all  his  bones  together  into  an  indistinguishable  mass ; 
you  see  the  hawk  dropping  upon  the  wounded 
bird.  You  see  pain,  trouble,  sorrow  on  every  side, 
and  you  say :  "  What  is  this  ?  'Brahman  is  bliss,' 
and  there  is  but  One  Life?  What  then  of  these 
tortured  creatures?  What  then  of  these  wounds 
and  deaths?" 

An  English  poet,  as  you  know,  has  voiced  that 
view  in  eloquent  words,  and  has  described  Nature 
as  red  in  tooth  and  claw;  but  I  venture  to  say 
to  you  that  the  poet  is  wrong,  and  that  he  does 
not  realize  at  all  the  life-side  of  nature.  The  life 
of  the  wild  animal  is  a  joyous  life,  and  not  a  life 
of  fear  and  pain.  Listen  to  the  bird  as  its  whole 
little  being  swells  in  the  delight  of  the  sunshine, 
and  a  flood  of  music  pours  out  from  the  throat 
of  the  songster  that  seems  too  mighty  to  come  from 
the  tiny  throat  that  gives  it  forth.  Watch  the 
kitten  as  it  plays  upon  the  ground,  as  it  leaps  at 
every  dancing  leaf;  and  if  there  is  naught  else 
to  play  with,  it  goes  round  and  round  after  its 
own  tail,  in  sheer  exuberance  of  the  joy  of  life. 
Watch,  as  naturalists  watch,  the  wild  life  of  the 
field  and  of  the  forest  where  man  is  not.  They 
will  tell  you,  as  they  watch,  that  the  life  of  the 
wild  creatures  js  a  life  of  joy;  sickness  is  not 
there;  death  comes  suddenly  and  strikes  away  the 
body.  They  tell  you  that  the  animal  can  be  seen 
well-nigh  to  laugh  as  it  tricks  its  pursuer,  and 


Theosophy  or  Paravidya  7 

plays  some  skilful  wile  that  throws  the  beast  of 
prey  from  off  its  track. 

The  truth  is  that  if  we  are  to  have  evolution, 
the  bodies  must  be  struck  away  in  some  fashion 
in  order  that  the  life  within  expanding  may  have 
a  new  body  as  soon  as  it  is  ready  to  wear  it. 
Would  you  say  it  was  cruel  that  the  mother,  when 
she  clothed  the  babe,  did  not  tie  the  babe  fast 
in  the  little  garments  that  she  made  for  it,  and 
thus  dwarf  its  future  growth  and  make  every  in- 
crease of  the  baby  body  painful,  as  it  strained 
against  the  constricting  cloth?  Or  is  it  not  wise, 
when  the  child  outgrows  the  dress,  to  tear  the 
dress  in  pieces  and  give  a  new  one  to  the  tiny 
form? 

And  so  is  death,  looked  at  from  the  life-side 
of  Nature.  The  body  has  done  its  work;  it  is 
broken  asunder  and  cast  aside,  that  the  life  within 
may  burgeon  into  new  beauty,  and  a  nobler  body, 
better  adapted  for  the  growing  life,  may  be  taken 
on  by  the  animal  that  was  slain.  Oh!  if  you  will 
look  at  Nature  without  prejudice,  without  throwing 
your  human  consciousness  into  the  animal  con- 
sciousness, you  will  find  that  they  are  true,  those 
words  that  I  borrow  from  Light  on  the  Path : 
"  Life  is  not  a  cry  but  a  song  " — a  song  in  every 
plant  that  blossoms  in  the  sunlight;  a  song  from 
every  bird  that  flits  among  the  branches  of  the 
tree ;  a  song  from  the  tiny  squirrel  that  leaps  from 


8  Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

branch  to  branch ;  a  song  from  the  bounding  ante- 
lope, from  even  the  creeping  snake. 

Only  with  man  comes  in  sorrow,  and  where 
man  is  seen  sorrow  treads  upon  his  heels.  Now 
why?  Because  plan  is  the  first  consciousness 
that  reaches  the  point  where,  as  the  Aitareya 
Brahmana  says  of  man :  "  He  knows  what  oc- 
curred yesterday."  Of  man  it  is  true  that  "  he 
looks  before  and  after,"  for  he  has  memory  of 
that  which  is  past,  anticipation  of  that  which  is 
to  come;  because  he  has  much  imagination,  the 
creative  force ;  and  because  he  adds  to  his  suffering 
the  memory  of  past  pain  and  the  fear  of  future 
anguish.  Try,  if  you  have  the  strength  of  mind 
to  do  it  when  some  pain  is  upon  you,  to  turn 
away  your  mind  from  the  pain  and  leave  the 
body  alone  to  suffer;  and  you  will  find  the  greater 
part  of  the  pain  has  vanished,  because  the  mind 
is  no  longer  magnifying  it  and  giving  to  it  its  own 
intensity  of  memory  and  of  fear. 

Man  is  sorrowful;  I  grant  it,  and  the  end  of 
philosophy,  we  are  told  by  Hindu  sages,  is  to  put 
an  end  to  pain.  For  that  all  great  philosophies 
are  given,  for  that  all  mighty  religious  teachers 
teach.  That  man  may  rise  above  sorrow,  he  is 
taught  how  to  look  upon  his  world;  and  if  a 
philosophy  does  not  put  an  end  to  pain,  then 
it  is  no  true  Wisdom,  but  only  the  foolish  spinning 
of  the  mind. 

There  was  a  gracious  Prince  nearly  twenty-five 


Theosophy  or  Paravidya  9 

centuries  ago,  from  the  knowledge  of  whom  all 
sorrow  had  been  kept  and  in  a  garden  of  delights 
He  spent  His  gladsome  days.  All  that  could  be 
given  of  beauty  and  of  love  clustered  around  that 
gracious  form,  and  earth  brought  all  her  treasures 
to  make  happy  the  one  who  was  to  become  Teacher 
and  was  Prince.  You  know  the  story;  how  the 
Prince,  whose  life  had  been  a  fairy  tale,  went 
out  outside  His  palace  of  delight,  and  met  a  beggar 
oppressed  with  poverty,  near  to  starvation;  met 
a  leper,  eaten  up  by  horrible  disease;  saw  an  old 
man  tottering  palsied  along  the  road ;  saw  a  corpse 
whence  the  life  of  man  had  fled;  and  you  know 
that  the  sight  of  these  sorrows  of  earth  pierced 
that  heart  that  had  been  lapped  in  joy,  drove 
Him  away  from  the  side  of  His  wife,  from  the 
protection  of  His  infant  child,  made  Him  draw 
the  sword  to  cut  off  His  hair,  made  Him  cast 
aside  the  robes  of  the  Prince  and  put  on  the 
cloth  of  the  mendicant,  sent  Him  out  in  solitude 
to  desert  and  to  forest  to  try,  by  starvation  and 
austerity,  by  misery  of  the  body,  to  find  out  the 
redemption  of  the  soul. 

You  know  how  He  outdid  all  other  ascetics  in 
His  great  austerities ;  how  He  became  a  mere  skele- 
ton, bones  showing  through  the  flesh  stretched  like 
parchment  across  them.  How  His  heart,  as  the 
poet  declared,  "  was  broken  with  a  whole  world's 
woe  " ;  and  how  beneath  the  Tree,  for  ever  sacred, 
He  found  the  illumination  of  Wisdom,  and  came 


10         Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

out  from  the  seat  beneath  the  Bodhi-tree  to  turn 
the  Wheel  of  Law  in  the  garden  of  the  Gods. 
He  found  the  Four  Noble  Truths;  sorrow,  the 
cause  of  sorrow,  the  ending  of  sorrow,  and  the 
noble  eight-fold  Path  that  leads  to  Nirvana.  So 
He  proclaimed  the  way  of  escape  by  which  man 
might  pass  from  sorrow  into  bliss — for  none  who 
understand  His  teaching,  having  touched  at  least 
somewhat  of  the  realities  whereof  He  spake,  think, 
as  many  of  the  Westerners  think,  that  Nirvana 
is  merely  an  extinction.  Did  not  the  Lord  Buddha 
declare  that  if  it  had  not  been  for  Nirvana,  the 
uncreate,  the  eternal,  the  essential  BEING,  there 
could  not  exist  the  create,  the  fleeting,  the  many 
transitory  beings  of  the  world? 

We  do  not  come  forth  from  an  emptiness  but 
from  a  fullness,  not  from  a  void  but  from  a  plenum. 
Shall  we,  in  whom  God  is  incarnate,  dream  that 
aught  but  eternity  is  the  heirloom  of  the  human 
Spirit?  We  find  that  it  is  taught  in  that  ex- 
quisite Upanishat,  the  Shvetashvatara,  with  a  simile 
which  is  full  of  suggestion :  "  When  a  man,"  it 
is  written,  "  can  squeeze  together  the  ether  like 
leather,  then  shall  he  find  escape  from  pain  with- 
out the  knowledge  of  the  ETERNAL." 

The  same  idea  underlies  Moksha,  Liberation,  that 
underlies  the  Nirvana  of  the  Buddhist — the  knowl- 
edge of  God,  that  puts  an  end  to  misery; 
useless  all  other  efforts;  futile  all  other  searches. 
When  you  can  take  the  viewless  ether  and  squeeze 


Theosophy  or  Paravidya  11 

it  as  an  object,  then  and  then  alone  shall  you 
escape  from  pain  without  the  knowledge  of  the 
ETERNAL.  And  to  those  two  statements  Christ 
adds  another  when  He  declares  that  the  knowledge 
of  God  is  eternal  life.  That  is  the  Salvation  of 
the  Christian,  the  equivalent,  rightly  understood, 
of  the  Nirvana  of  the  Buddhist  and  the  Moksha 
of  the  Hindu;  for  the  great  Teachers  all  teach 
alike  in  essence,  and  if  we  understand  Them  not, 
it  is  not  Their  fault  but  the  fault  of  our  ignorance. 
That  knowledge  of  God  which  is  eternal  life,  that 
Moksha  which  is  Liberation,  that  Nirvana  which 
is  'jhe  portion  of  the  Jivanmukta,  that  is  not, 
as  a  Master  said,  a  change  of  conditions,  but  of 
condition.  That  is,  it  is  not  a  change  in  the  outer 
phenomena  that  surround  your  life;  it  is  not  a 
change  in  the  changing  feelings  which  make  up 
your  emotions;  it  is  not  a  change  in  the  thoughts 
that  come  and  go;  it  is  a  change  which  is  Realiza- 
tion, a  change  in  the  inner  attitude  of  the  Spirit 
himself. 

That  is  the  knowledge  which  brings  bliss  to 
man,  that  the  knowledge  which  is  the  knowledge 
of  the  Supreme.  It  need  not  be  in  the  future. 
A  Christian  Apostle  said :  "  God  hath  given  us 
eternal  life."  It  has  nothing  to  do  with  Heaven; 
it  has  nothing  to  do  with  Svarga;  it  has  nothing 
to  do  with  any  Paradise;  call  it  by  whatever  name 
you  will,  it  is  a  change  in  the  inner  condition  of 


12        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

the  man,  a  change  by  which  he  knows  himself, 
and  knows  himself  as  God. 

And  the  books  show  it.  When  the  Lord  Buddha 
had  attained  that  which  is  beyond  Nirvana,  He 
remained  on  earth  and  taught  for  five-and-forty 
years.  When  Janaka,  the  King,  became  a  Jivan- 
mukta,  he  did  not  leave  his  throne  nor  quit  his 
royal  city.  When  Tuladhara,  the  grocer,  reached 
Moksha,  Liberation,  he  did  not  cease  to  sell  his 
commodities,  but  in  himself  was  life  and  wisdom. 
You  need  not  leave  the  world,  you  need  not  leave 
your  work,  you  need  not  leave  your  duties.  The 
Kingdom  of  God  is  within  you,  and  if  you  cannot 
find  it  there,  it  is  nowhere  to  be  found  by  you. 

And  so,  if  we  turn  to  one  of  these  great  Upani- 
shats  in  which  the  Aryan  Wisdom  is  so  magnifi- 
cently taught,  we  may  read  therein  of  one  named 
Shaunaka,  who  came  to  ask  how  he  might  gain 
knowledge  and,  finding  the  great  Rshi,  Angiras, 
he  said  to  him :  "  In  whom,  O  Lord,  He  being 
known,  may  everything  else  be  known?"  and  the 
answer  came  from  the  anan  who  had  attained 
to  wisdom :  "  There  are  two  things  that  ought  to 
be  known;  thus  have  told  us  the  knowers  of  the 
ETERNAL — the  supreme  and  the  lower."  In  case 
the  lay  inquirer  should  not  understand  the  two 
words,  the  "  supreme "  and  the  "  lower,"  he  went 
on  to  say  in  what  the  lower  consisted,  and  he 
gave  first  of  all  the  names  of  the  four  Vedas, 
the  Rk,  Yajur,  Sama  and  Atharva,  and  having 


Theosophy  or  Paravidya  13 

named  those  four  sacred  Scriptures,  he  proceeded 
to  name  the  six  well-known  Angas  of  the  Vedas, 
the  six  great  sciences  which  will  be  well-known 
to  you  all.  And  then,  having  classed  the  whole 
of  these  as  the  "  lower  knowledge,"  he  went  on 
to  declare  that  that  Highest  or  Supreme  Knowledge 
is  that  by  which  the  Indestructible  One  is  known. 
And  then  he  described  that  Supreme,  the  knowl- 
edge of  whom  gave  knowledge  of  all  else;  "He, 
the  invisible,  ungraspable,  without  family,  without 
caste,  without  eye  or  ear,  without  hand  or  foot, 
the  everlasting,  all-pervading,  all-permeating,  very 
subtle,  that  inexhaustible,  whom  the  wise  see  as 
the  womb  of  beings."  *  Such  was  his  wonderful 
description  of  the  One,  the  knowledge  of  whom 
is  the  supreme  knowledge,  the  only  knowledge 
which  is  really  worth  having  in  the  world.  That 
is  said  to  be  the  Paravidya — that  which  in  modern 
days  we  call  Theosophy.  And  in  words  perhaps 
more  familiar  to  some  of  you,  in  the  great  Scrip-! 
ture  of  the  Bhagavad-Gita,  it  is  declared  by  Shri 
Krshna  that  "  Constancy  in  the  Wisdom  of  the 
Self,  understanding  of  the  Object  of  essential  wis- 
dom ;  that  is  declared  to  be  the  Wisdom ;  all  against 
it  is  ignorance.  I  will  declare  that  which  ought 
to  be  known,  that  which  being  known  immortality 
is  enjoyed — the  beginningless  supreme  ETERNAL, 
called  neither  being  nor  not-being."2  In  another 

*Mundakop.  I,  I.  3— «. 
*Loc.  Cit.  xiii,  11,  12. 


14        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

passage  He  declared  that  those  who  know  the 
ETERNAL  have  reached  Self-knowledge,  and  are 
they  who  know  Him  verily,  and  are  beyond  life 
and  death,  liberated  from  both.1 

So  that  we  come  to  realize  that  the  knowledge 
of  the  Self  is  the  knowledge  of  the  ETERNAL,  and 
that  they  who  know  the  God  within  know  that 
which  alone  is  worthy  of  the  name  of  Wisdom. 

Now  what  is  the  meaning  of  that  ETERNAL, 
of  Him  who  is  bliss,  knowing  whom  we  reach 
Liberation?  Eternal  is  not  unending  time.  Eternal 
is  different  from  everlasting.  For  everlasting  only 
means  age  after  age  in  endless  succession,  while 
the  Eternal  is  an  ever-present  Reality,  above,  Shri 
Krshna  said,  being  and  not-being;  and  in  thes»e 
two  words,  the  ultimate  pair  of  opposites,  He 
summed  up  all  the  pairs  of  opposites  which  make 
up  the  universe  in  which  we  live.  Pleasure  and 
pain,  joy  and  sorrow,  these  are  the  things  that 
make  up  mortal  life;  but  bliss  is  something  other 
than  unending  joy.  The  pairs  of  opposites  always 
exist  together,  and  you  must  transcend  the  pairs 
of  opposites  before  you  can  reach  the  Supreme. 

What  is  pleasure?  Increase  of  life.  What  is 
pain?  Diminution  of  life.  What  is  joy?  An 
elation  coming  from  outside.  What  is  sorrow?  A 
pain  that  comes  from  without.  They  must  perish. 
Pleasure  and  pain  must  go.  Joy  and  sorrow  must 
vanish.  But  beyond  this  there  is  Bliss,  where  there 

*  Cf .  ibid  vii,  29,  30. 


Theosophy  or  Paravidya  15 

is  no  increase  of  life — for  it  is  infinite ;  no  decrease 
of  life — for  decrease  of  life  to  the  infinite  is  im- 
possible ;  where  there  is  no  sorrow,  no  fear,  for 
it  is  all  in  all,  all-embracing,  and  there  is  nothing 
external  which  can  touch  it,  for  all  is  within  itself. 
The  pairs  of  opposites  come  from  the  play  of 
the  outer  universe  on  the  inner  Spirit.  Bliss  is 
above  the  pairs  of  opposites,  and  knows  neither 
increase  nor  diminution.  To  live  in  the  ETERNAL 
is  to  live  in  unchanging  bliss;  these  sorrows  and 
joys  play  around  your  feet ;  they  cannot  rise  above 
your  head.  It  is  to  have  your  feet  on  the  rock 
of  Eternity,  and  the  waves  of  time  may  break 
against  the  rock,  but  they  cannot  wash  you  off 
it,  for  there  your  feet  are  fixed.  To  live  in  the 
ETERNAL  is  to  be  above  the  streams  of  time,  so 
that  none  may  touch  that  calm  serenity  of  him  in 
whose  heart  the  ETERNAL  ever  abides.  Thus  we 
realize  that  to  gain  unending  heaven  would  not 
be  to  live  in  the  ETERNAL,  and  that  to  win  unending 
kingdoms  upon  earth  would  fall  far  below  that 
radiant  Bliss  of  the  ETERNAL. 

We  ask  how  this  supreme  knowledge  can  be 
gained  by  man,  and  from  the  East  the  words  come 
to  you  from  those  who  have  won  it,  and  from 
the  West  also  there  is  witness;  for  there  we  find 
one  form  of  Christianity  which  is  called  Mysticism ; 
this  asserts  direct  communion  with  God  and 
realization  of  the  divine  Spirit  within,  the  Self  in 
Man,  the  Self  which  is  divine.  Quite  lately  the 


16         Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

Dean  of  the  Cathedral  of  S.  Paul,  lectured  upon 
Mysticism,  and  was  commented  upon  by  the  Times 
newspaper,  which  was  surprised  at  what  the  Dean 
declared ;  we  find  him  saying  "  Mystical  experience 
is  a  solid  fact,  guaranteed  by  those  who  have  had 
it."  But,  says  the  Times :  Mysticism  was  "  commonly 
supposed  to  be  an  obsolete  state  of  mind,  or  to 
persist  only  among  the  ignorant  and  sentimental." 
And  then  the  Dean  goes  on  to  explain  that  Mysti- 
cism is  "  religion  at  first  hand,"  not  a  teaching 
from  outside  but  an  unfolding  from  within;  and 
he  declares  that  the  Mystic's  faith  "  is  more  scien- 
tifically secure  "  than  any  other  kind  of  faith.  Not 
only  does  he  make  that  statement,  but  in  a  later 
lecture  he  uses  a  phrase  which  reminds  us  in 
startling  fashion  of  one  of  the  shlokas  of  the 
Bhagavad-Gita.  He  declares  that  a  man  who  "  was 
filled  with  water  springing  up  into  everlasting  life  " 
"  could  not  very  much  care  for  the  stagnant  cisterns 
of  tradition,"  of  ordinary  religious  teaching.  When 
you  hear  such  words  from  the  Dean  of  S.  Paul's, 
when  he  speaks  of  these  "  stagnant  cisterns  of 
tradition,"  does  there  not  rise  in  the  minds  of  some 
of  you  that  verse  in  the  Gita :  "  All  the  Vedas 
are  as  useful  to  an  enlightened  Brahmana  as  is  a 
tank  in  a  place  covered  all  over  with  water."1 
When  you  have  water  around  you,  you  have  no 
need  for  a  tank.  When  God  speaks  within  you. 
there  is  no  need  for  any  Scripture,  however  sacred, 

.  Cit.  ii,  46. 


Theosophy  or  Paravidya  17 

for  any  tradition,  however  ancient.  Where  the 
Supreme  is  known  all  else  becomes  but  ignorance, 
and  the  man  who  has  found  the  God  within  has 
no  further  need  of  teaching  from  aught  that  man 
may  say. 

And  our  Dean  declares  that  the  one  great  mystic 
experience  is  direct  communion  with  God;  every 
Mystic  would  confirm  the  statement.  That  is  the 
object  of  the  Mystic's  efforts ;  that  the  crown  of 
the  Mystic's  strife. 

Suppose,  then,  that  for  the  moment  you  realize 
that  this  possibility  of  direct  communion  with  God 
is  the  beginning  of  Paravidya,  or  Theosophy,  that 
such  communion  is  possible  to  man.  You  may 
say:  How  comes  it  to  be  possible;  how  can  man 
know  God?  The  answer  is  along  the  same  lines 
of  reasoning  by  which  you  obtain  any  other  knowl- 
edge. You  know  the  thing  to  which  you  can 
answer  from  within.  If  you  are  able  to  see  this 
banyan  tree,  you  see  it  because  in  your  eye  there 
is  ether  that  can  vibrate  in  response  to  the  move- 
ments of  the  ether  that  you  call  the  light.  You 
cannot  see  it  when  light  is  not  there ;  you  can  only 
see  it  when  the  vibrations  of  the  ether  produce 
in  your  eye  the  answering  vibrations  by  which  you 
become  conscious  of  the  presence  of  the  tree. 

And  so  with  God.  The  human  Spirit  is  a  frag- 
ment of  that  mighty  One  who  declares  in  the  Gita: 
"  I  established  this  universe  with  a  fragment  of 
myself  and  I  remain  " — a  fragment  of  that  Supreme 


18         Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

to  whom  all  universes  are  but  as  waves  in  His 
own  great  ocean,  passing  phenomena  in  that  bound- 
less sea  of  His  life.  That  is  your  Self,  your  real 
Self — not  the  foolish  body  that  blinds  you,  not 
the  surging  emotions  that  confuse  you,  not  the 
changing  thoughts  that  deafen  you — but  that  which 
lies  beyond  them  all.  And  because  you  are  Spirit, 
you  can  reach  the  supreme  Spirit;  because  you  are 
of  His  Nature,  you  can  answer  to  that  which  comes 
forth  from  Him;  and  so  the  poet  apostrophised 
his  own  Spirit,  and  said  to  the  Spirit  within  him : 

Speak  to  Him,  thou,  for  He  hears,  and  Spirit 

with  Spirit  can  meet; 
Closer  is  He  than  breathing,  nearer  than  hands 

and  feet. 

Your  hands  are  outside  you ;  your  feet  are  outside 
you;  your  breathing  is  outside  you;  your  emotions 
and  your  thoughts  are  outside  you.  But  God  is 
within  you,  the  Life  of  yowr  life,  the  Essence  of 
your  Spirit. 

And  so  we  find  over  and  over  again  that  in 
these  great  Upanishats  this  teaching  is  repeated.  But 
you  may  fairly  say  to  me:  Do  they  tell  us  how 
to  gain  the  knowledge?  For  to  know  that  there 
is  knowledge  to  be  had  and  not  to  reach  it  would 
only  add  a  new  grief  to  the  pain  of  the  world. 
But  I  find  in  these  sacred  books  that  the  knowledge 
is  clearly,  is  distinctly,  given.  Sink  into  the  depths 


Theosophy  or  Paravidya  19 

of  your  own  being,  and  there  you  will  find  God. 
Turn  to  that  wonderful  passage  in  the  Kathopani- 
shat,  where  the  man  is  told  the  steps  of  the  road 
and  the  way  in  which  he  should  walk.  It  is  the 
passage  in  which  it  is  declared  that  "higher  than 
the  senses  are  verily  their  objects;  higher  than 
their  objects  is  the  mind;  higher  than  the  mind 
is  the  intellect;  higher  than  the  intellect  is  the 
Spirit;  higher  than  the  Spirit  is  the  Unmanif ested ; 
higher  than  the  Unmanifested  is  Purusha, . . .  the 
supreme  Goal."  Translate  those  last  two  words 
by  the  help  of  Theosophical  explanation,  and  you 
have  first,  the  Unmanifested — the  Monad  immedi- 
ately beyond  the  Spirit,  or  the  triple  Atma,  as  the 
Spirit  is  sometimes  called — the  Monad  who  is  the 
Witness,  and  beyond  that  Ishvara  Himself,  God, 
the  LOGOS,  who  is  one  with  the  Spirit  in  man,  since 
the  Monad  is  part  of  Himself. 

And  then  the  Upanishat  goes  on  to  instruct  you 
in  what  you  should  do.  It  begins  in  the  outer 
world,  where  the  senses  are  in  touch  with  the 
objects  of  sense.  And  then  it  tells  you  to  merge 
the  senses  in  the  mind,  and  the  mind  in  the  in- 
tellect, and  the  intellect  in  the  Spirit,  and  the 
Spirit  in  the  Unmanifested  Monad,  and  that  in  the 
supreme  Ishvara  Himself.  That  is  the  line  of 
ascent.  Another  hint  is  given  you  as  to  method, 
for,  earlier  in  the  Kathopanishat,  a  graphic  simile 
is  given  for  instruction.  The  body,  says  the  writer, 
is  the  chariot,  and  the  rider  within  the  chariot  is 


20         Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

the  embodied  Spirit.  The  horses  are  the  senses 
which  pull  along  the  chariot,  and  the  mind  is  the 
reins  whereby  the  horses  may  be  controlled;  the 
mind  is  the  reins  in  the  hands  of  the  driver,  who 
is  the  intellect.  Then  the  Upanishat  goes  on  to 
explain  that  unless  the  charioteer  holds  the  reins 
of  the  mind  firmly,  he  will  have  the  uncontrolled 
horses  of  the  senses  plunging  along  over  the  roads 
of  the  objects  of  the  senses;  but  if  he  is  wise 
and  with  his  intellect  controls  the  mind,  holding 
firmly  the  reins,  then  the  senses  will  be  quiet,  as 
the  well-broken  horses  of  the  charioteer.  And 
then  we  are  told  that  when  the  senses  are  conquered, 
when  the  mind  is  still,  that,  then,  in  the  quiet  of 
the  senses  and  the  tranquillity  of  the  mind,  we 
may  "behold  the  glory  of  the  Self."  There  lies 
the  Path. 

But  immediately  after  this  Path  has  been  de- 
scribed; immediately  after  man  has  been  taught 
how  he  had  best  shape  his  efforts,  so  that  he  may 
go  towards  the  great  goal;  then  there  rings  out 
the  statement :  "Awake ;  arise ;  find  the  great  Ones 
and  attend;  for  the  wise  tell  us  that  the  road  to 
Him  is  hard  to  travel,  and  sharp  as  the  edge  of 
a  razor."  Not  by  himself  may  man  travel  that 
razor  Path;  not  without  the  help  of  the  Teachers, 
of  the  Elder  Brethren,  may  he  hope  to  reach  his 
goal. 

So,  when  the  Path  has  been  depicted,  he  who 
would  tread  it  is  pointed  to  the  Teachers,  for 


Theosophy  or  Paravidya  21 

only  as  They  help  the  aspirant  shall  that  razor 
Path  be  safely  trodden  to  the  goal.  Hence  it  is 
that  I  shall  try  to  show  you  to-morrow  that  Theos- 
ophy is  the  Open  Road  to  the  Masters,  for  of 
what  avail  to  hold  up  the  Paravidya  as  that  which 
is  supremely  desirable,  unless  some  strong  hand 
shall  be  extended  to  steady  us  as  we  try  to  tread 
that  razor  Path? 

Again  I  find  in  these  Upanishats  the  exact  out- 
line of  that  road.  First,  take  in  hand  the  control 
of  the  body.  Sloth  is  your  great  enemy  where 
the  body  is  concerned.  Inertia,  tamas,  that  is  your 
foe.  Conquer  that  sloth  of  the  body,  so  that  it 
shall  not  be  a  hindrance  in  your  future  way.  Then 
take  in  hand  your  senses,  those  parts  of  the  body 
which  have  become  differentiated  in  order  to  make 
channels  whereby  the  objects  of  the  outer  world 
may  reach  the  next  sheath  which  clothes  the  Self, 
that  we  call  the  sheath  of  the  desires  and  the 
emotions.  How  are  you  to  conquer  them?  By 
the  mind.  You  cannot  wish  for  what  you  choose; 
wishing  is  beyond  your  power;  desiring  is  beyond 
your  power.  Desires  surge  up  and  carry  you  away 
like  the  unbroken  horses  that  run  away  with  the 
chariot. 

How  then  to  bridle  those  horses  and  pull  them 
in?  By  the  mind,  the  reins;  in  quiet  times  when 
the  senses  are  at  rest;  in  silent  moments  when 
the  desires  are  asleep;  when  they  do  not  torment 
you  nor  stir  you  to  activity,  then  is  your  chance. 


22         Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

Then  turn  the  mind  to  meditation,  and  let  it  dis- 
criminate between  the  really  desirable  and  the  ap- 
parently desirable  ;  let  it  realize  by  its  own  study 
that  every  contact  of  the  senses  is  but  a  womb  of 
pain;  that  as  long  as  the  senses  rule,  pain  will 
follow  on  satisfaction,  as  night  follows  on  the  day. 
In  those  quiet  moments  listen  to  the  voice  of  the 
mind,  and  use  the  mind  to  control  the  senses  and 
to  turn  them  to  the  really  desirable,  to  that  which 
is  lasting  instead  of  fleeting,  which  will  be  a  womb 
of  joy  instead  of  a  womb  of  pain. 

Train  yourself  in  meditation,  and  when  you  have 
conquered  the  senses — for  until  they  are  your  slaves 
no  further  progress  along  this  road  is  possible  for 
you — when  the  senses  are  silenced,  when  they  are 
no'  longer  stirred  by  desires  coming  from  the  ob- 
jects of  sense,  then  hand  over  the  mind  to  the 
intellect,  the  lower  to  the  higher  man.  Then  let 
the  lower  mind  be  quieted;  then  let  it  be  still  as 
a  lake  without  a  ripple ;  for  as  a  lake  ripples  under 
the  wind,  so  does  the  mind  ripple  under  the  wind 
of  desire,  and  the  ruffled  surface  will  reflect  no 
object  aright.  But  when  the  mind  is  still  as  a 
mirror,  when  the  lake  is  quiet,  then  in  the  lake 
you  can  see  the  stars  that  are  shining  in  the  heaven, 
and  in  the  mind  you  can  see  the  image  of  the  Self 
reflected  down  into  it  as  into  a  mirror. 

And  when  once  you  have  seen  the  Self;  when 
once  you  have  realized  the  Self;  then  the  desires 
and  the  mind  will  be  silent,  for  there  is  naught 


Theosophy  or  Piaravidya  23 

that  can  affect  that  majesty.  So  you  may  read 
in  the  Upanishat  that  I  quoted  before — the  Shveta 
shvataropanishat — you  may  read  the  wondrous 
description  of  Him  who  is  found  by  the  man  who 
has  conquered  the  senses  and  who  is  ruler  of  his 
mind.  It  is  declared  in  that,  that  when  the  darkness 
of  ignorance  has  gone,  when  the  pairs  of  opposites 
have  been  transcended,  then  in  meditation  nothing 
remains  save  the  ever-blessed  One  alone.  "  No 
image  may  be  made  of  Him  whose  Name  is  infinite 
glory.  Not  for  the  sight  exists  His  form,  none 
may  by  the  eye  behold  Him;  but  by  devotion  and 
knowledge  He  may  be  seen  in  the  heart  by  the 
mind,  and  who  sees  Him  thus  becomes  immortal." 
That  is  the  Paravidya;  that  the  very  essence  of 
Theosophy;  man  may  know,  and,  knowing,  may 
realize  his  own  Eternity. 

To  that  Realization,  to  that  Vision  of  the 
Supreme,  to  that  Peace  which  knows  no  changing, 
to  that  Strength  which  knows  no  limit,  may  the 
ever-blessed  Ones  guide  you  who,  listening  to  words 
so  feeble,  may  translate  them  into  beauty  by  the 
voice  of  the  God  within  you.  Such  is  the  prayer 
of  all  who  once  have  seen ;  and  because  man  has 
seen,  other  men  also  may  see. 


LECTURE  II 
FRIENDS  : 

You  will  remember  that  yesterday  we  spoke  of 
the  supreme  knowledge,  of  the  knowledge  which 
is  Eternal  Life,  of  the  finding  of  that  knowledge 
in  the  heart,  the  temple  of  the  Supreme.  And 
you  may  remember  that  with  reference  to  that  I 
quoted  an  ancient  Word,  that  Word  in  which  it 
is  said :  "  Awake !  Arise !  Seek  the  great  Ones 
and  attend;  for  the  wise  tell  us  that  the  road  to 
Him  is  hard  to  travel,  and  sharp  as  the  edge  of 
a  razor."  Quite  naturally,  then,  we  turn  to-day 
to  see  whether  Theosophy,  which  we  found  was 
identical  with  this  Wisdom  of  God,  whether  it 
has  something  to  tell  us  as  to  how  we  shall  seek 
the  great  Teachers,  how  we  may  find  Them  in 
order  that  we  may  attend  to  Their  teaching.  And 
glancing  back  over  the  very  distant  reaches  of 
history,  we  find  that  at  the  time  and  in  the  countries 
where  this  Science  of  the  Supreme  was  taught, 
there  also  the  Teachers  were  to  be  found,  so  that 
there  was  no  doubt  for  the  searcher.  If  he  sought, 
he  would  find. 

24 


Theosophy  the  Open  Road  to  the  Masters       25 

In  ancient  India,  in  the  literature  from  which 
I  drew  yesterday  most  of  my  illustrations,  in  that 
literature  we  find  a  tradition,  a  record  of  the  past, 
which  speaks  of  the  great  Teachers,  calls  Them 
by  the  name  of  Rshis,  and  looks  to  Them  as  the 
givers  of  Wisdom,  as  Those  who  can  guide  us 
along  the  razor  Path.  And  not  only  do  we  find 
Them  mentioned  in  the  literature,  but  there  are 
certain  facts  that  we  cannot  but  observe,  which 
lead  us  to  the  conclusion  that  the  literature  is  an 
accurate  record.  We  find  certain  books  that  go, 
as  you  know,  by  the  name  of  Aranyaka,  '  the 
forest,'  that  which  was  taught  in  the  forest;  and 
we  have  heard  how  these  great  Teachers  wandered 
in  forest  ways,  how  bands  of  disciples  gathered 
around  Them,  and  that  the  very  name  '  Upanishat ' 
came  from  the  idea  of  sitting  at  the  feet  of  a 
Teacher.  Then  we  also  find,  when  we  look  into 
other  parts  of  the  literature,  like  those  compressed 
statements  that  are  known  as  '  Sutras,'  or  threads, 
that  by  themselves  they  are  sometimes  well-nigh 
unintelligible;  quite  inevitably  the  idea  is  pressed 
upon  the  mind  that  they  are  the  mere  headings 
of  discourses,  that  when  a  Teacher  spoke  one  of 
these  great  sentences,  he  then  expounded  it,  ex- 
plained it,  made  his  disciples  meditate  thereon,  and 
so  led  them  to  find  out  all  that  lay  hidden  beneath 
the  few  and  pregnant  words.  We  find  that  in 
later  times  the  lack  of  true  Teachers  was  supplied, 
inadequately  indeed,  by  the  commentaries  written 


26         Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

by  the  learned  and  the.  scholarly;  but  when  we 
read  these,  we  find  that  while  they  are  admirable 
in  grammar,  in  logic,  in  the  exposition  of  outer 
meaning,  it  is  only  now  and  again  that  some  gleam 
of  spiritual  light  breaks  through  the  jungle  of 
words,  illuminates  the  obscurity  of  the  passage. 
So  much  is  that  true,  that  I  have  sometimes  advised 
the  earnest  student  to  shut  up  the  commentaries, 
to  place  them  on  the  shelf,  to  go  and  sit  in  medita- 
tion, and  by  meditating  on  the  original  words,  to 
try  to  find  out  the  depths  of  spiritual  meaning 
that  lie  hidden  therein,  for  him  who  has  learned 
to  conquer  his  passions  and  to  control  his  thoughts. 
And  looking  at  these  great  axioms  under  which 
mighty  truths  are  put  in  tersest  fashion,  we  seem 
to  see  beyond  the  words  the  speaker,  the  Master 
of  the  Wisdom,  pointing  His  children  to  the  truth. 

And  when  we  look  elsewhere  in  the  older  times, 
we  find  similarly  that  there  were  special  Teachers 
who  unrolled  the  supreme  knowledge  to  the  earnest 
and  the  pure.  We  may  read  in  the  Hebrew  Bible 
of  the  School  of  the  Prophets;  how  men  gathered 
together  that  they  might,  under  the  training  of  an 
accepted  Prophet,  learn  something  of  the  divine 
Mysteries;  for  you  must  remember  that  in  the 
older  literature  '  Prophet '  does  not  mean  specially 
'  foreteller,'  but  rather  the  Teacher  of  the  Hidden 
Knowledge,  the  man  who  had  gained  more  of 
Wisdom  than  his  fellows. 

Then   again   we   find  in  a  country  like   Egypt, 


Theosophy  the  Open  Road  to  the  Masters       27 

priests,  a  priesthood,  who  were  holders  of  the  secret 
knowledge.  And  those  of  you  who  know  some- 
thing of  symbolism  will  remember  that  when  you 
see  on  the  double  crown  of  Egypt  the  head  and 
part  of  the  body  of  the  asp,  the  hooded  head,  you 
will  remember  that  that  was  the  sign  of  the  organ 
in  the  forehead  by  which  the  third  sight,  the  third 
eye,  manifests  itself  as  organ  in  the  outer  world; 
and  that  men  only  made  the  symbol  out  of  gold 
and  brass  when  that  which  it  symbolized  had  been 
forgotten  and  the  power  that  it  indicated  no  longer 
existed. 

And  so  you  find  this  idea  of  Teachers  to  whom 
the  would-be  learner  might  go,  and  everywhere  in 
the  elder  days  there  was  the  open  road,  the  road 
along  which  the  student  might  travel,  the  road 
which  led  him  to  the  beginning  of  the  Path  where 
the  Teacher  was  certain  to  welcome  him.  It  was 
by  that  Gate  which  the  Christ  declared  to  be  so 
strait,  the  entrance  to  that  Pathway  which  He  said 
was  so  narrow,  it  was  by  that  Gate,  ready  to  guide 
along  that  Pathway,  that  the  Teacher  stood  revealed 
in  ancient  days. 

And  coming  down  nearer  to  our  own  day,  but 
still  far  away,  we  find  the  Mysteries  of  Greece, 
of  later  Egypt,  of  Assyria,  symbols  in  the  lower 
world  of  those  true  Mysteries  that  have  ever 
existed,  and  still  exist,  under  the  control  of  the 
great  White  Brotherhood,  the  Lodge  of  the  Mas- 
ters of  the  Wisdom.  The  Mysteries  had  various 


28        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

grades;  sometimes  they  were  the  way  to  real 
knowledge  and  real  Teachers  used  them  for  the 
instruction  of  the  learner.  You  may  read  in  the 
writings  of  the  Greek  philosophers,  like  Plato,  that 
those  who  were  initiated  in  the  Mysteries  lost  the 
fear  of  death  and  knew  the  certainty  of  immor- 
tality. You  may  come  farther  down  the  stream 
of  time  to  the  early  days  of  the  Christian  Church, 
and  there  you  will  find  the  Mysteries  of  Jesus,  to 
which  the  Christian  was  admitted  under  rigid  con- 
ditions of  purity,  of  capacity  to  learn.  And  it  is 
said  in  the  older  Christian  writings — those  that 
were  written  by  the  wise  men  called  the  Fathers 
of  the  Church — that  in  those  Mysteries  were  passed 
on  to  the  pupils  the  teaching  that-  Jesus  gave  in 
secret  to  His  own  disciples.  The  whole  ancient 
world  is  illuminated  by  these  great  places  of  reve- 
lation, and  you  find  them  lasting  onwards  into 
comparatively  modern  times,  disappearing  finally 
from  Europe  during  the  sixth,  seventh  and  eighth 
centuries  after  the  Christian  era. 

Now  those  Mysteries  disappeared  for  lack  of 
pupils  and  the  lack  of  pupils  was  not  only  due 
to  ignorance  and  sloth  among  the  people.  It  was 
also  due  to  the  growth  of  a  spirit  of  persecution, 
as  Christianity  became  linked  with  the  State  and 
grew  orthodox  and  narrow — orthodoxy  laying  down 
certain  conditions  of  membership  in  the  Church, 
which  threatened  all  that  we  were  speaking  of 
yesterday  as  Mysticism.  To  be  a  Mystic  was  to 


Theosophy  the  Open  Road  to  the  Masters       29 

be  suspected;  to  be  a  Mystic  was  to  be  in  danger 
of  civil  and  religious  persecution;  and  when,  under 
the  Emperor  Constantine,  Christianity  became  the 
religion  of  the  State,  then  the  sword  began  to  be 
sharpened,  and  the  prison  doors  began  to  swing 
back,  and  the  sacred  knowledge  was  branded  as 
dangerous,  and  those  who  sought  to  know  were 
denounced  as  mischievous  to  the  State. 

Hence  partly  from  fear,  partly  also  from  ignor- 
ance, pupils  were  lacking  for  these  Mysteries  of 
Wisdom;  and  since  the  Teacher  could  not  teach 
without  pupils,  since  the  Master  cannot  reach  those 
who  are  "unwilling  to  be  taught,  gradually  the 
exoteric  belief  took  the  place  of  the  ancient  knowl- 
edge, and  faith  in  the  dogmas  of  a  Church  took 
the  place  of  faith  in  the  God  within  the  temple 
of  the  heart.  And  then,  when  we  look  about  for 
the  Teachers,  we  see  that  they  are  hard  to  find. 
They  never  really  quite  disappear.  You  find,  here 
in  India,  Gurus  worthy  of  the  name  wandering 
about  from  place  to  place  with  bands  of  earnest 
disciples.  You  find  the  Sufis  among  our  brothers 
of  Islam,  who  also  possess  the  ancient  Wisdom 
and  give  it  to  others  in  the  ancient  way.  Strict 
the  conditions,  rigid  the  rules,  for  it  is  no  mercy 
to  give  Wisdom  to  those  who  are  impure  and 
ignorant.  Better  give  a  knife  into  the  hands  of 
a  baby,  better  place  dynamite  in  the  hands  of 
a  child,  than  give  the  supreme  knowledge  to  those 
who  are  unworthy,  and  would  wrest  its  powers  to 


30        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

the  service  of  the  lower  self.  For  men  who  are 
ignorant,  exoteric  religion  is  enough.  It  is  the 
school  in  which  they  learn  the  elements  of  right 
living  and  right  knowledge.  Hence  in  those  days, 
both  in  East  and  West — while  in  the  East  Teachers 
still  were  to  be  found — men  had  to  wander  far 
and  wide,  undergo  many  a  hardship  and  many  a 
difficulty,  travel  long  distances,  face  many  a  danger 
of  desert,  of  wild  beasts,  of  flood,  while  they  sought 
for  the  Guru  who  was  able  to  teach  them,  and 
counted  all  things  but  as  dross  if  only  Wisdom 
might  be  gained.  You  find  men  wielding  power, 
men  who  are  ministers  of  great  Kings;  nay,  you 
find  Monarchs  themselves  coming  down  from  their 
thrones,  casting  aside  sceptre  and  royal  robe,  put- 
ting on  the  garb,  the  cloth,  of  the  ascetic,  taking 
in  hand  the  bowl,  and  wandering  forth  in  search 
of  a  Teacher  who  had  the  gold  of  Wisdom,  more 
priceless  than  the  gold  of  kingly  crown.  Never 
the  tradition  vanished,  never  was  the  world  with- 
out guides,  albeit  they  might  be  hard  to  find.  In 
the  West  the  ancient  knowledge  was  handed  down 
amid  great  perils  to  life  and  limb,  kept  in  memory 
by  secret  Orders  that  from  time  to  time  we  find 
emerging  from  the  darkness  of  history,  and  giving 
here  and  there  an  indication  that  they  had  knowl- 
edge that  the  masses  did  not  share. 

There  are  those  of  you  who  know  the  tragic 
story  of  the  Knights-Templars;  those  of  you  who 
have  read  of  the  frightful  persecutions  to  which 


Theosophy  the  Open  Road  to  the  Masters       31 

those  Templars  were  exposed;  who  have  read  of 
the  bones  crushed  into  mere  powder;  of  the  limbs 
strained  asunder  by  the  dragging  of  the  rack;  of 
the  red-hot  pincers;  and  the  fearful  torment  of 
the  wedge  driven  between  the  knees  and  ankles. 
And  when  you  ask  what  were  the  accusations, 
what  do  you  find?  You  find  testimony:  "We  say, 
this  man  trampled  on  the  Cross;  we  say  that  man 
trod  upon  the  Crucifix " ;  and  any  of  you  who 
know  something  of  the  great  Orders  that  still  exist 
to-day,  who  are  trained,  say,  in  Masonic  symbolism, 
and  remember  the  details  of  your  own  initiation 
into  Masonry,  you  will  understand  what  was  meant 
by  the  treading  on  the  Cross,  and  you  will  realize 
the  hidden  truth  that  lay  behind  the  apparently 
blasphemous  action.  And  other  things  also  you 
may  learn  to  understand,  if  you  take  opportunities 
of  gaining  some  of  that  hidden  knowledge;  and 
you  will  find  that  the  old  tradition  never  quite 
perished,  that  it  never  utterly  died,  that  under  many 
names  that  hid  the  objects,  under  many  fantasies 
that  concealed  the  reality  of  the  study,  there  were 
always  men  and  women  who  were  pupils  of  the 
true  Teachers,  and  who  risked  everything  that  earth 
could  give  in  order  that  the  secret  knowledge  might 
be  discovered,  might  be  learned. 

And  so  you  come  downwards  ever,  and  find  the 
world  growing  darker  and  darker,  more  and  more 
materialistic,  until  you  reach  the  nineteenth  century 
and  notice  the  tremendous  growth  of  materialism. 


32         Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

You  have  never  had  in  the  East  the  conflict  that 
marks  European  history  between  religion  and 
science.  They  have  never  been  placed  in  opposition 
in  eastern  lands.  Science,  as  we  know  it  now, 
the  study  of  all  the  phenomena  of  the  outer  world, 
that  is  the  lower  knowledge  of  which  the  ancient 
Scriptures  teach.  Nature  is  but  the  garment  of 
God,  natural  phenomena,  they  are  His  language 
to  men;  and  so  you  find  Bruno  teaching  in  the 
sixteenth  century  that  Nature  is  God's  language,  that 
every  natural  object  is  a  word  spoken  by  God,  and 
that  if  you  study  nature,  if  you  learn  to  know 
the  meaning  behind  natural  phenomena,  then  God 
the  Word  is  speaking  to  you  through  the  outer 
form;  thus  shall  science  be  a  way  to  religion,  and 
the  study  of  Nature  become  the  revelation  of  the 
Supreme.  He  taught  it  in  strange  ways,  under 
strange  symbols,  but  the  truth  is  there.  Alas ! 
religion  then  would  have  nothing  to  do  with 
science;  it  racked  its  teachers,  burnt  its  prophets, 
slew  its  messengers;  and  so  there  grew  up  in  the 
minds  of  the  men  of  knowledge  a  hatred  against  the 
religion  that  silenced  them  when  they  fain  would 
have  spoken  of  truth.  Oh,  when  we  speak  of  the  op- 
position of  science  to-day,  we  who  have  learned  the 
value  of  religion,  never  let  us  forget  that  in  the  past 
it  was  the  religion  of  the  day  that  tore  out  the 
tongues  of  Vanini  and  many  another,  so  that  no 
words  might  come  from  the  mouth,  whereby  the 
truths  of  science  might  be  taught.  And  these 


Theosophy  the  Open  Road  to  the  Masters       33 

things  leave  bitter  memories;  these  are  handed 
down  from  generation  to  generation.  Then  blame 
not  too  bitterly  science,  that  when  it  came  to  its 
own,  and  was  able  to  hold  itself  safely  against 
the  threats  of  the  Churches — blame  it  not  if  it 
rejoiced  to  find  anything  which  could  be  used  as 
a  stone  to  cast  at  religion,  and  that  the  memories 
of  the  Inquisition,  of  the  stake  and  of  the  rack, 
were  flung  back  as  contempt  and  hatred  as  science 
grew  strong  and  religion  grew  weak.  And  so  we 
find  in  Europe,  in  the  nineteenth  century,  an  im- 
mense growth  of  materialism ;  not  always  a  declara- 
tion that  the  materialistic  philosophy  was  accurate, 
but  the  far  more  subtle  and  therefore  more  dan- 
gerous allegation  that  man  had  no  means  where- 
by he  might  find  out  God.  Agnostic  was  the  name 
that  was  chosen — without  knowledge;  but  what 
knowledge?  Clearly  not  the  knowledge  of  science, 
clearly  not  the  knowledge  of  the  objects  of  the 
phenomenal  world ;  but  the  knowledge,  the  supreme 
knowledge,  the  Gnosis  that  the  Greeks  had  followed, 
the  Paravidya  that  had  been  known  in  eastern 
lands.  Man,  they  said,  had  senses — by  these  he 
might  study  objects.  Man,  they  said,  had  mind, 
whereby  he  could  draw  conclusions  on  the  observa- 
tions he  had  made.  But  beyond  the  senses  and 
beyond  the  mind  there  was  nothing  more  whereby 
knowledge  might  be  gained  by  man,  and  therefore 
he  could  not  know  that  which  was  beyond  the 


34         Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

observation  of  the  senses  and  the  reasoning  power 
of  the  mind. 

And  into  that  materialistic  world,  into  the  midst 
of  that  circle  of  Agnostics  that  had  gathered  to- 
gether into  it  well-nigh  all  the  names  most  honored 
in  the  world  of  modern  thought,  into  that  came  a 
Messenger  from  the  ancient  Masters  of  the  Wis- 
dom, into  that  world  there  came  alone  a  woman, 
that  greatest,  that  noblest,  of  women,  Helena  Pet- 
rovna  Blavatsky.  Alone  she  came,  and  proclaimed 
again  in  that  world  the  existence  of  great  Teachers 
whom  she  declared  that  she  knew.  She  made  no 
pretence  of  great  discoveries  of  her  own  making; 
"  I  but  teach  what  I  have  been  taught "  was  her 
continual  proclamation.  But  she  committed  the 
great  sin,  the  intolerable  offense,  of  declaring  to 
an  ignorant  world :  "  I  know,"  and  that  they  could 
not  bear.  Fraud  they  called  her,  cheat  they  called 
her,  swindler  they  called  her.  Mockery  and  ridicule 
— these  were  the  least  of  the  imputations  that  they 
flung  at  her;  and  she,  a  woman  of  noble  birth, 
proud,  intensely  proud,  of  her  honor,  of  her  truth, 
of  her  good  name,  she  would  rather  a  hundred 
times  that  they  had  burned  her,  like  Bruno,  at 
the  stake,  than  that  they  had  tortured  her  with 
foul  accusations  and  soiled  her  honor  with  imputa- 
tions of  fraud  and  of  disgrace.  But  she  knew; 
her  feet  were  on  a  rock,  and  she  found  an  old 
friend  of  older  days,  that  gallant  soul  whom  you 
knew  as  Henry  Steele  Olcott,  not  full  of  knowledge 


Theosophy  the  Open  Road  to  the  Masters       35 

as  was  the  direct  Messenger  of  the  Lodge.  How 
often  have  the  older  among  you  heard  him  say 
in  his  frankness  and  straightforwardness :  "  I  am 
no  philosopher.  You  must  not  come  to  me  for 
teaching."  And  yet  he  knew  so  much  more  than 
many  who  were  proud  of  their  knowledge  of 
philosophy,  and  have  a  long  train  of  letters  after 
their  names  of  the  learned  Societies  to  which  they 
belong.  And  those  two,  the  American  man  and 
the  Russian  woman,  they  stood  alone  against  a 
world  in  arms.  And  she  poured  out  the  knowledge 
that  none  then  living  had  the  power  to  test.  She 
prophesied  of  scientific  discoveries  twenty  years  be- 
fore they  were  made.  Now  science  is  beginning 
to  justify  her ;  now  some  of  the  statements  ridiculed 
and  scoffed  at  are  given  out  as  great  discoveries 
by  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Societies,  and  other  learned 
people  in  the  European  band  of  those  who  claim 
the  name  of  knowledge.  You  can  find  them  in 
her  work  The  Secret  Doctrine,  so  that  none  can 
declare  that  she  did  not  proclaim  them  long  ere 
western  science  had  re-discovered  them.  She  told 
us  that  there  was  a  hidden  science,  an  occult 
science,  the  science  that  used  to  be  taught  in  the 
Mysteries,  the  science  that  the  Rshis  passed  on 
to  Their  pupils;  she  told  us  that  there  were  still 
Masters  and  that  she  knew  Them;  she  told  us 
that  the  Teachers  could  be  reached  by  those  who 
were  willing  to  fulfill  the  conditions,  and  to  bring 
the  ancient  sacrifice  of  all  that  earth  can  offer  in 


36        Jheosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

exchange  for  the  treasures  of  the  Wisdom;  she 
told  us  that  the  gateway  was  not  shut;  she  told 
us  that  open  was  the  road  to  the  Masters;  that 
she  had  trodden  it;  that  she  knew  it  to  be  true. 
And  not  only  did  she  declare  that,  but  out  of  his 
own  personal  knowledge  Henry  Steele  Olcott  de- 
clared the  same.  Then  she  took  pupils  in 
order  that  she  might  train  them  in  the  knowledge 
that  she  had  acquired,  so  that  when  she  passed 
out  of  her  worn-out,  broken  body,  they  might  carry 
on  the  testimony  that  she  had  given;  for  never 
again  was  the  world  to  be  left  for  many  centuries 
to  come  without  one  or  more  who  could  say :  "  I 
know,"  who  no  longer  said :  "  I  think,"  who  no 
longer  declared :  "  I  believe,"  who  no  longer  pro- 
claimed :  "  The  Church  declares  it,  or  tradition 
affirms  it,"  but  who  would  say  fearlessly,  despite 
a  mocking  world :  "  I  know  the  Masters  live,  for 
I  have  seen  Them;  I  have  been  taught  by  Them; 
I  have  been  led  along  the  Path  to  which  They 
alone  can  give  admission." 

And  so  when  she  was  called  away,  she  left 
behind  some  of  her  pupils  who  had  been  led  by 
her  into  the  presence  of  the  Masters,  who  could 
speak  of  their  own  knowledge  and  not  by  hearsay 
from  another.  Not  yet  the  time  of  peace  for 
them;  not  yet  the  time  of  general  acceptance  and 
of  easy  living.  But  which  think  you  is  the  better: 
with  strong  hand  to  make  the  road  wherein  others 
shall  travel  easily  in  the  future,  or  to  wait  until 


Theosophy  the  Open  Road  to  the  Masters       37 

others  have  made  the  road  and  then  walk  along 
it  with  unbleeding  feet?  It  seems  to  me  that  to 
open  up  the  way,  to  face  the  hardships,  to  trample 
smooth  the  road  with  bleeding  feet  where  the 
generations  of  the  future  shall  walk  unafraid — 
that  is  the  work  which  appeals  to  the  soul  that 
is  heroic,  that  is  the  fascination  that  beckons  to 
the  one  who  loves  the  work  of  the  pioneer.  Let 
others  take  the  easy  way  when  the  road  is  ready. 
Let  some  of  us  come  forward  and  make  it,  in 
order  that  future  men  may  walk  there  unafraid. 
And  so  some  who  in  the  past  had  known  the 
great  Masters,  who  in  previous  lives  had  lived  with 
Them  and  served  Them  well,  they  were  gathered 
into  the  Theosophical  Society;  and  at  first  the 
Society  as  a  whole  was  meant  to  be  the  Open 
Road  to  the  Masters.  The  Society  was  told :  "  Make 
up  your  mind  about  the  Masters."  They  called 
Them  then  the  '  Elder  Brethren,'  and  They  loved 
the  name  of  Brother  more  than  the  name  of  Master. 
Our  reverence  has  given  it  to  Them;  They  did 
not  ask  it  for  Themselves.  And  the  choice  was 
put  before  the  Society,  whether  it  would  or  would 
not  acknowledge  the  Masters  as  its  guides.  "  Leave 
us,"  one  of  Them  once  wrote,  when  advice  was 
offered  to  Them  which  They  were  unwilling  to 
take ;  "  leave  us  to  steer  our  Theosophical  ship." 
But  people  were  not  willing  that  They  should  steer 
it;  people  thought  they  knew  better  what  was 
good  for  the  world  than  the  Masters  of  the  Wisdom 


110569 


38        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

knew ;  and  so  they  determined  that  no  such  declara- 
tion should  be  made  by  the  Society  as  a  whole. 
It  should  not  be  allowed  to  declare  that  it  was 
the  servant  and  the  messenger  of  the  Masters 
of  the  Wisdom.  And  They  retired  for  a  time, 
as  They  had  said  They  would,  going  back  into 
the  silence  in  which  so  long  They  had  lived.  Then 
H.  P.  B.,  at  the  orders  of  her  own  Master,  founded 
what  you  now  know  as  the  Esoteric  Section.  In 
1888  that  was  made,  and  she  printed  the  statement 
that  that  was  intended  to  fulfill  the  early  purpose 
of  the  Society. 

And  so  the  Society  went  along  its  easier  road 
of  philosophy,  metaphysics  and  religion — a  great 
and  noble  road — but  only  those  who  were  willing 
to  go  further,  and  eager  to  go  faster,  were  gathered 
by  her  into  that  band  of  disciples  and  offered 
by  her  the  secrets  of  the  Divine  Wisdom.  And 
ever  since  that  day  this  Esoteric  Section  has  en- 
dured, going  through  various  phases,  accommodat- 
ing itself  to  the  weaknesses  of  its  members,  often 
giving  up  an  important  matter  because  men  were 
not  yet  ready  for  it,  but  ever  going  steadily,  though 
slowly,  onwards,  towards  the  appointed  goal.  And 
then  a  Master  said :  "  Seek  us  through  the  Theo- 
sophical Society  " ;  and  only  those  who  entered  the 
Society  were  allowed  to  come  onwards  into  the 
Esoteric  Section;  only  those  who  took  the  first 
step  were  allowed  to  go  further  along  the  Open 
Road.  The  message  went  out  to  the  struggling, 


Theosophy  the  Open  Road  to  the  Masters       39 

striving  seekers.  "  There  is  an  open  road ;  there 
is  an  open  way;  no  longer  search  in  the  jungle, 
in  the  desert,  in  the  cave,  for  those  who  can  teach 
you.  Here  is  the  open  gateway  to  the  path  in 
the  world  of  men;  walk  ye  in  it,  and  at  the  other 
end  you  will  find  the  Teacher  standing."  And 
many  came  in,  and  out  of  many  a  few  began 
steadily  to  walk  onwards,  seeking  for  the  Master 
that  some  inner  conviction  told  them  must  exist, 
more  perfect,  mightier,  greater,  than  they  them- 
selves and  the  men  around  them.  And  gradually, 
bit  by  bit,  that  inner  intuition  became  a  divine 
portion  of  knowledge,  and  the  teaching  was  given 
out  even  to  the  world  as  to  the  way  by  which 
the  Masters  might  be  found. 

And  then  we  were  taught  that  as  They  were 
the  great  Servants  of  Humanity,  it  was  by  the 
Path  of  Service  that  men  living  in  the  outer  world 
might  begin  to  tread  the  outer  way  whereon  they 
should  find  their  Teacher.  Men  were  not  asked 
to  leave  their  ordinary  avocations;  they  were  not 
asked  to  come  away  from  the  market-place  to 
the  jungle,  from  the  office  to  the  desert.  "  Stay 
where  you  are,"  came  the  word  of  the  Instructor; 
"  change  your  attitude,  not  your  avocations ;  for 
avocations  that  help  the  world  to  roll  along  its 
everlasting  ways  are  activities  which  are  blest  by 
God,  and  in  them  the  divine  action  is  carried  on. 
Be  a  lawyer,  be  a  judge,  be  a  doctor,  be  a  mer- 
chant, be  what  you  will;  but  do  it  all  for  the 


40         Theosophy  an(j  ^g  Theosophical  Society 

sake  of  the  divine  law  and  as  part  of  the  divine 
activity."  That  was  the  lesson  Theosophy  began 
to  teach  by  Service,  by  unselfish  devotion  to  the 
interests  of  others.  By  being  willing  to  share  your 
knowledge  with  the  ignorant;  by  being  willing  to 
take  your  purity  amid  the  foul;  by  recognizing 
the  lowest  as  well  as  the  highest  as  your  brothers ; 
thus  may  you  gradually  tread  the  path  that  leads 
to  Initiation. 

Those  are  the  first  steps.  So  long  as  any  human 
being  is  despised  by  you,  looked  down  upon  and 
treated  with  contempt ;  so  long  as,  when  you  would 
give  money  to  the  pariah,  you  take  it  and  fling  it  on 
the  earth  because  you  think  your  purity  will  be  spoilt 
if  you  place  it  respectfully  and  courteously  in  his 
hand;  so  long  as  men  are  bidden  to  go  out  into 
the  road  so  that  their  shadow  may  not  defile  the 
ground  on  which  you  are  going  to  walk;  so  long 
as  the  Brahmana  is  proud  of  his  privilege  and 
forgets  his  duty,  so  long  the  path  of  discipleship 
is  not  open  to  him. 

You  want  to  be  the  brother  of  the  highest,  the 
younger  brother  of  the  Elder  Brothers  of  man- 
kind? But  you  have  younger  brothers,  younger 
brothers  who  are  suffering,  who  are  in  pain  and 
difficulty  and  distress,  who  are  festering  in  the 
midst  of  dirt,  whom  none  has  ever  taught  to  be 
clean  and  pure.  There  is  only  one  Brotherhood, 
the  Master  at  the  head,  the  pariah  at  the  other 
end;  and  if  you  would  grasp  the  hand  of  the 


Theosophy  the  Open  Road  to  the  Masters       41 

Master,  you  must  stretch  out  your  hand  to  the 
pariah.  For  the  brotherhood  will  not  be  granted 
to  you  which  you  deny  to  a  fellow-man. 

And,  so,  Service  is  the  first  step.  And  then  we 
have  been  told  the  Qualifications  which  we  need 
when,  striving  to  serve  the  world,  we  would  tread 
the  higher  path,  the  path  which  is  called  that  of 
probation.  You  may  read  of  it,  if  you  will,  in 
Shri  Shankaracharya,  where  he  laid  down  the  con- 
ditions in  Samskrt  terms  familiar  to  every  student 
amongst  you.  You  may  read  it,  if  you  will,  in  the 
recorded  teachings  of  the  Lord  Buddha,  where, 
in  the  Pali,  you  will  find  the  names  that  match 
your  own  Samskrt  Hindu  terms.  You  may  read 
it,  if  you  will,  in  the  simple  and  beautiful  language 
in  which  a  child-disciple  put  down,  as  he  remembered 
them,  the  wisdom  of  the  Master  who  taught  him, 
and  placed  in  that  exquisite  little  book,  At  the  Feet 
of  the  Master,  what  the  Hindu  boy  had  learned 
from  one  of  the  Masters  of  the  Wisdom. 

There  is  no  lack  of  information.  Take  it  in 
the  form  of  scholarship,  or  in  the  form  that  a 
child  can  understand,  you  are  told  what  to  do. 
You  must  develop  Viveka,  discrimination  between 
the  real  and  the  unreal,  by  which  alone  you  can 
distinguish  the  passing  phenomena  from  the  eternal 
truths  they  veil  and  oftentimes  distort.  Having 
learned  something  of  Viveka,  of  true  discrimination, 
then  you  come  to  Vairagya,  dispassion,  desireless- 
ness,  indifference  to  the  outer  objects  in  the  search 


42        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

for  which  men  weary  themselves  both  day  and 
night.  And  when  some  discrimination  is  yours, 
when  some  dispassion  has  been  reached,  then  you 
must  try  to  bind  round  your  forehead  those  Six 
Jewels  of  the  Mind,  which  form  the  crown  that 
you  must  wear  as  you  approach  the  Portal  of 
Initiation.  You  must  learn  Control  of  Thought, 
you  must  learn  Control  of  Action,  you  must  learn 
Endurance,  for  the  way  is  long.  You  must  learn 
Equilibrium,  for  there  is  nothing  that  must  upset 
you.  You  must  learn  Tolerance,  for  you  must 
see  the  Self  in  all.  You  must  learn  Faith  in  the 
God  within  you  as  well  as  in  the  God  without. 
And  when  the  Six  Jewels  are  bound  upon  your 
forehead,  then  shall  you  be  seen  as  ready  to  enter 
the  Portals  of  Initiation.  And  when  that  happy 
day  has  come  for  you,  when  a  Master  has  taken 
you  under  His  personal  care,  has  put  you  on  definite 
probation,  has  accepted  you  as  His  chela — child- 
disciple — then  shall  come  the  day  when  He  and 
one  of  His  Brethren  shall  take  your  hands  in 
Theirs,  and  lead  you  up  to  the  great  Hierophant 
who  shall  give  you  the  key  of  knowledge,  and 
allow  the  leaves  of  the  Portal  of  Initiation  to  swing 
open  before  your  eager  feet. 

Then  shall  you  be  taught,  having  gone  through 
the  Portal,  that  there  are  three  weaknesses  that 
you  must  get  rid  of.  You  must  get  rid  of  super- 
stition, which  thinks  that  the  outer  form  is  ma- 
terial or  necessary  to  the  Spirit,  in  order  that  he 


Theosophy  the  Open  Road  to  the  Masters       43 

may  make  his  way  onwards.  You  must  get  rid 
of  the  delusion  of  the  separated  self,  in  which 
you  know  your  self  as  other  than  those  around 
you.  You  must  cast  away  doubt,  by  knowledge 
of  certain  great  truths — the  knowledge  of  rein- 
carnation, the  knowledge  of  karma,  the  knowledge 
of  the  existence  of  the  Path,  and  of  the  power 
to  walk  thereon. 

And  when  those  fetters  are  cast  away,  then  the 
next  Door  is  open  before  you,  and  then  the  great 
downflow  comes  which  gives  power  of  mind,  and 
you  are  bidden,  through  the  years  that  lie  in  front, 
gradually  to  bring  the  higher  knowledge  down  into 
the  lower  mind,  and  to  guide  your  feet  by  the 
light  that  streams  from  the  Higher  Self.  And 
when  that  is  gained,  then  the  third  Portal  is  before 
you;  and  then  you  have  to  cast  away  love  and 
hatred;  that  is  to  say,  that  form  of  love  which 
is  attachment  of  the  personal  self  to  the  personal 
self;  not  the  love  of  Spirit  to  Spirit,  which  is 
the  foundation  of  the  universe  and  the  essence 
of  God  Himself;  but  the  pair  of  opposites,  as 
desire,  as  hatred — those  are  fetters  to  be  cast  away. 

Then  before  you  looms  up  the  great  fourth  Por- 
tal, which  has  ever  upon  it  marked  the  symbol 
of  the  Cross.  Then  you  come  to  the  gateway 
that  none  may  pass  through  until  he  has  known 
the  loneliness  of  utter  desolation;  until  friends 
have  deserted  him  and  enemies  have  assailed  him; 
until  thrown  back  on  the  Self  within  him,  when 


44        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

no  answer  comes  to  the  cry  of  anguish :  "  My 
God,  My  God,  why  hast  Thou  forsaken  me  ?  "  then, 
in  that  uttermost  loneliness,  he  finds  the  Self,  and 
never  again  can  know  himself  alone;  and  he  passes 
through  the  fourth  Portal,  and  five  are  the  final 
weaknesses  that  he  must  cast  aside. 

Words  here  are  misleading  rather  than  illumina- 
tive, because  the  names  that  are  given  to  the  faults 
in  the  lower  world  hardly  indicate  the  subtle  and 
refined  weaknesses  which  are  found  as  the  Path 
is  drawing  to  its  ending  and  the  Liberation  of 
the  Spirit  is  at  hand.  They  speak  of  throwing 
aside  desire  for  life  in  form,  and  desire  for  form- 
less life.  They  speak  of  getting  rid  of  pride;  they 
speak  of  getting  rid  of  anger ;  they  speak  of  getting 
rid  finally  of  Avidya,  of  ignorance.  These  are 
the  last  five  fetters  that  hold  the  Spirit  in  bondage, 
and  then  the  fifth  gateway  is  before  the  triumphant 
combatant. 

Then  before  the  pilgrim  who  had  trodden  the 
Path,  the  razor  Path,  so  far,  there  lies  the  threshold 
that  admits  to  Liberation;  beyond  that  there  open 
the  seven  ways  along  any  one  of  which  the  liber- 
ated Spirit  may  tread.  And  Those  whom  we  call 
the  Masters;  Those  to  whom  our  hearts  go  out  in 
deepest  adoration  and  most  passionate  gratitude: 
They  are  the  great  Ones  who,  being  liberated,  have 
still  kept  the  burden  of  the  flesh  upon  Them,  who, 
being  free,  bind  themselves  by  Their  own  loving 
will,  and  who  declare:  "Until  the  least  of  my 


Theosophy  the  Open  Road  to  the  Masters       45 

brethren  is  ready  for  Liberation,  I  will  dwell  amid 
the  men  of  earth  and  point  the  way  to  peace." 

Over  Their  land  shines  out  the  Blazing  Star, 
which  is  the  sign  of  the  highest  achievement.  In 
Their  voice  sound  out  the  notes  of  music  that  touch 
the  hearts  of  men  amid  the  discords  of  the  world. 
Theirs  is  the  Light  which  clears  up  all  obscurities. 
Theirs  the  Fire  which  burns  up  everything  that  is 
impure.  And  Theirs  the  Love,  the  love  which  re- 
gards each  as  a  mother  regards  her  first-born  child, 
and  makes  sacrifice  a  joy,  bondage  a  delight,  service 
freedom. 

That  is  the  Open  Road  to  the  Masters  and  such, 
feebly  limned,  are  the  Masters  who  guide  us  on  the 
road. 


THEOSOPHY,  THE  ROOT  OF  ALL 
RELIGIONS 

LECTURE  III 

FRIENDS  : 

We  are  to  think  to-day  of  Theosophy  as  the 
Root  of  all  Religions.  We  saw  in  our  first  meeting 
that  there  was  a  supreme  teaching  which  is  the 
common  heritage  of  all  spiritual  men  and  women. 
In  our  second  gathering  we  learned  that  those  who 
would  find  their  way  to  the  knowledge  of  God 
should  take  advantage  of  the  help  of  the  Elder 
Brothers  of  our  race,  and  should  follow  Them  along 
the  road  that  Their  feet  have  already  trodden.  To- 
day I  would  try  to  show  you  that  while  the  prin- 
ciples are  one,  the  manifestations  are  many;  that 
while  the  supreme  knowledge,  the  knowledge  of 
God,  lies  at  the  root  of  every  religion  that  has  ex- 
alted man's  intelligence  and  purified  man's  emotions, 
we  can  find  underlying  the  various  forms  of  religion 
certain  fundamental  spiritual  verities  which  are  built 
on  the  one  foundation — the  knowledge  of  the  Su- 
preme. Now  Origen,  one  of  the  greatest  early 
Christian  teachers — who  is  only  not  called  a  '  Father 
of  the  Church '  nor  given  the  prefix  of  '  Saint '  be- 
cause his  thought  was  wider  than  the  thought  of 
the  orthodox  and  his  wisdom  very  much  profounder 

46 


Theosophy  the  Root  of  All  Religions  47 

than  the  wisdom  of  the  later  Church — the  great 
teacher  Origen  declared  that  no  religion  could  be 
safely  founded  unless  there  were  Gnostics  among 
its  members.  And  as  you  remember  yesterday,  we 
saw  that  the  Gnosis  was  the  Greek  form  of  the 
supreme  Wisdom,  the  Mysticism  of  the  West,  the 
Brahma  Vidya  of  the  East.  Origen  pointed  out  that 
every  religion  had  the  duty  of  instructing  the  igno- 
rant, had  the  duty  of  guiding  the  thoughtless,  of 
bringing  medicine  for  those  who  are  sick  with  the 
disease  of  sin.  But  not  out  of  the  ignorant,  the 
blind,  and  the  sinful  could  the  foundations  of  a  true 
Church,  a  true  religion,  be  made.  And  so  we  find 
that  at  the  beginning  of  each  great  Faith  there  are 
certain  Teachers  who  come  out  into  the  world,  who 
always  teach  the  same  fundamental  verities,  who 
always  proclaim  the  same  unchangeable  moralities, 
who  always  symbolize  truth  under  the  same  ancient 
symbols.  And  They  only  differ  in  the  externals  of 
Their  religions,  which  are  adapted  to  the  genius  of 
the  people  to  whom  They  come,  to  the  age  in  which 
They  go  forth  into  the  world,  to  the  special  develop- 
ment characteristic  of  the  people  to  whom  They 
bring  Their  message — They  give  only  a  new  form 
of  the  eternal  truth,  the  Sanatana  Dharma. 

Looking  back  over  the  past,  we  see  rising  above 
their  contemporaries  certain  mighty  figures,  the  fig- 
ures of  the  Founders  of  the  great  religions.  And 
we  find  that  These,  while  each  of  Them  strikes  His 
own  note,  teach  what  I  have  called  the  same  funda- 


48        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

mental  verities.  Each  does  strike  His  own  note; 
there  is  a  difference  between  the  religions  of  the 
world  in  the  predominance  which  each  religion  gives 
to  one  particular  teaching  or  group  of  teachings. 
But  those,  rightly  seen,  ought  not  to  be  regarded  as 
walls  of  division,  but  rather  as  the  notes  of  some 
rich  chord  of  harmony,  every  note  adding  a  new 
beauty  to  the  chord,  so  that  not  one  of  them  could 
be  dropped  without  an  injury  to  the  whole. 

Let  me  remind  you  of  what  we  found  in  our 
Theosophical  teachings  as  to  the  notes  of  the  great 
religions  which  are  characteristic  of  the  fifth  or 
Aryan  Race,  that  Race  taking  its  birth  on  the  high- 
lands of  Arabia,  and  then  coming  to  Central  Asia 
for  its  definite  establishment.  It  spread  out  over 
the  whole  of  the  western  world — back  to  Arabia,  to 
Egypt,  along  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean,  then 
to  Persia,  then  to  Greece,  and  from  Greece  over  the 
rest  of  Europe ;  then  again  from  the  Caucasus  out- 
wards to  north  and  west,  until  you  find  five  sub- 
races  there,  with  various  subdivisions.  Each  of 
those  has  its  own  note,  just  as  the  Root  stock,  com- 
ing across  the  Himalayas  into  India,  had  its  own 
note  which  dominates,  in  a  sense,  the  whole  of  the 
later  teachings.  We  find  that  the  note  that  was 
given  to  Hinduism,  that  most  ancient  of  living 
faiths,  was  the  great  proclamation  of  the  omni- 
presence of  God,  of  the  immanence  of  God  in  every 
object:  "  I  established  this  universe  with  one  frag- 
ment of  Myself,  and  I  remain."  Out  of  that  great 


Theosophy  the  Root  of  All  Religions  49 

teaching  of  a  universal  Life  embodying  itself  in 
endless  forms,  came  the  correlative  teaching  of  the 
Dharma,  the  duty,  that  belonged  to  each  group  of  the 
forms,  so  that  the  life  in  manifold  embodiments 
might  show  forth  the  qualities  necessary  for  a  well- 
builded  and  healthy  Society ;  and  so  on  the  basis  of 
the  Institutes  of  the  great  legislator,  Manu,  you  had 
built  up  the  deathless  fabric  of  Hinduism,  its  polity 
and  philosophy. 

Then,  when  you  go  westwards  towards  Egypt, 
you  find  the  note  of  Knowledge  was  the  note  struck 
by  the  religion ;  to  Persia,  you  find  Purity  is  the 
predominant  quality  insisted  upon,  and  does  not 
every  Parsi  to-day  repeat,  after  the  teaching  of  his 
mighty  Prophet :  "  Pure  thoughts,  pure  words,  pure 
deeds?" 

Then  came  the  message  to  Greece,  and  Greece 
gave  the  religion  of  Beauty  to  the  world.  Rome 
took  up  the  message,  and  spoke  the  word  of  Empire 
and  of  Law. 

Then  came  the  great  religion  of  the  Christ,  pro- 
claiming on  the  one  side  Individuality,  the  value  of 
the  individual,  and  on  the  other  Self-Sacrifice — 
the  duty  of  the  strong  to  be  the  servants  of  the 
weak,  the  duty  of  the  greatest  to  be  as  he  that  doth 
serve.  And  so  note  after  note  was  added  to  the 
chord,  color  after  color  was  added  to  the  radiance ; 
and  not  one  note  can  be  spared,  not  one  color  can 
be  cast  aside;  for  as  all  notes  make  the  chord  and 
all  colors  make  the  whiteness  of  the  light,  so  all 


50        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

the  religions  together  speak  out  the  one  Truth  of 
God,  and  in  their  many  syllables  the  one  divine 
Name  is  heard. 

Now,  that  is  a  valuable  fact.  I  make  no  apology 
here  for  the  variety  of  religious  beliefs,  for  I  assert 
that  in  that  variety  lies  their  great  value  to  men. 
Men  are  of  different  temperaments,  of  different 
lines  of  thought;  men  are  of  different  types,  they 
are  put  together  in  different  ways.  Would  you  have 
religion  one  in  its  forms  as  well  as  one  in  its  essence  ? 
Then  tell  the  sun  to  send  out  but  a  single  ray  of 
color,  and  make  all  the  varied  world  one  color,  be- 
cause you  only  have  one  hue  out  of  the  white.  Look 
round  this  assemblage,  and  you  see  many  a  color 
gleaming  out  from  the  garments  worn.  Look  at 
the  sea  behind  us,  and  see  the  depths  of  its  splendid 
blue.  Walk  over  the  gardens  that  surround  you. 
and  see  the  many-colored  beauty  of  the  flowers. 
Look  at  the  green  of  the  banyan-tree  and  the  many 
shades  that  other  trees  reveal.  Whence  do  they  all 
come  ?  They  come  out  of  the  whiteness  of  the  light. 
For  every  object  on  our  earth  takes  out  of  the  white 
light  the  colors  which  it  needs,  and  then  reflects  the 
remainder  into  the  eyes  of  men;  if  all  the  colors 
were  not  in  the  light,  you  could  not  have  the  sepa- 
rate colors  which  depend  on  the  varieties  of  the 
ways  in  which  matter  is  aggregated  together.  And 
so  it  is  that  generally  the  differences  depend  on  the 
differences  of  the  ways  in  which  the  human  mind  is 
built  and  the  human  emotions  expressed;  the  same 


Theosophy  the  Root  of  All  Religions  51 

light  acts  on  them  but  by  them  is  divided  into 
many  colors,  and  all  the  colors  together  give  back 
the  one  white  light.  And  if  at  night  in  some  won- 
derful cathedral,  where  the  windows  were  filled 
with  many-colored  glass,  you  wandered  outside  the 
building,  you  would  see  the  violet  and  the  red,  the 
orange  and  the  blue,  the  green  and  the  yellow,  and 
you  might  say :  "See  how  many  are  the  colors,  how 
many  are  the  lights !  "  Go  within  the  building,  and 
one  white  light  shines  out,  and  the  colors  are  the 
colors  of  the  glass  and  not  of  the  light.  So  the 
different  religions  vary  in  their  presentment  of 
truths,  but  the  light  of  truth  is  one. 

Now,  is  that  only  a  poetical  way  of  speaking,  is 
that  only  the  trick  of  the  orator?  Or  does  it  repre- 
sent a  natural,  a  demonstrable  truth?  Only  by 
study  can  you  answer  the  question  to  your  own  satis- 
faction. Let  me  point  out  the  way  of  study,  so  that, 
listening  for  a  moment  to  the  Theosophical  expo- 
sition, you  may  realize  the  facts  on  which  that  ex- 
position is  builded.  There  is  no  doubt  for  any 
educated  person  that  all  the  great  religions,  living 
and  dead,  have  taught  the  same  fundamental  facts. 
You  may  go,  if  you  like,  to  comparative  mythology, 
and  collect  together  all  the  testimonies  that  have 
been  gathered  from  the  excavations  made  by  archae- 
ologists and  antiquarians;  and  you  will  find  that 
where  they  have  dug  into  the  surface  of  the  earth, 
where  they  have  unburied  city  after  city — and  some- 
times they  have  dug  down  through  eight  and  ten 


52        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

cities  before  the  oldest  one  has  been  found — you 
will  find  that  the  things  which  they  have  brought 
out  from  the  excavations,  the  things  which  had 
been  made  for  and  kept  in  temples,  the  frescoes 
painted  on  the  walls,  the  fragments  of  ancient  papyri 
and  other  literature,  fragments  which  have  been 
rescued  from  the  tombs;  that  they  tell  the  same 
stories,  they  teach  the  same  doctrines,  they  pro- 
claim the  same  moral  precepts,  they  show  the  same 
symbols  of  religious  truth.  Two  explanations  are 
possible  of  this  identity  of  teaching.  One  is  the  ex- 
planation given  by  the  comparative  mythologists : 
that  all  the  religions  of  the  world  resemble  each 
other  because  they  all  grew  out  of  the  ignorance  of 
the  savage,  who  personified  the  sun  and  the  moon, 
the  trees  and  the  ocean,  who  saw  a  God  behind  every 
form,  and  then  gave  names  to  the  Gods  and  formed 
a  vast  mythology.  In  later  times,  the  comparative 
mythologists  go  on  to  say,  the  more  learned,  the 
more  thoughtful,  built  philosophies  out  of  these 
ancient  superstitions;  human  knowledge  has  refined 
the  savage  guesses,  human  growth  has  evolved  more 
spiritual  religions,  and  your  comparatively  modern 
religions,  your  philosophy,  your  refined  ideas  of 
God,  the  various  doctrines  of  morality — they  are 
only  the  beautifully  evolved  results  of  the  growth  of 
human  thoughts  and  human  emotions. 

It  is  a  defensible  position  at  first  sight.  Why 
should  not  man  have  evolved  in  religion  as  he  has 
evolved  in  everything  else?  The  only  misfortune 


Theosophy  the  Root  of  All  Religions  53 

is  that  the  facts  do  not  fit  into  the  theory,  and  it  is 
better  to  build  a  theory  out  of  facts,  than  to  build  a 
theory  first  and  then  twist  the  facts  to  suit  it.  I 
appeal  to  history.  Is  there  one  of  our  great  religions 
which  shows  any  signs  of  evolving,  so  that  in  the 
teaching  of  the  men  of  to-day  it  is  greater  than  it 
was  in  the  mouth  of  its  Founder,  and  in  the  mouths 
of  His  immediate  followers  ?  You  have  your  Upani- 
shats.  Have  you  in  modern  Hinduism,  with  all  the 
"  advantage  of  modern  enlightenment,"  any  who 
can  write  one  sentence  you  can  put  beside  the  ex- 
quisite sublimity  of  those  ancient  books  ?  You  have 
commentators,  you  have  grammarians,  you  have 
logicians;  but  they  all  deal  with  the  knowledge  of 
the  past,  and  try  out  of  the  thought  of  the  present  to 
find  out  what  was  meant  by  those  ancient  writers. 
Not  one  of  them  can  touch  the  sublimity  of  the 
ancients;  not  one  of  them  goes  one  step  in  moral- 
ity beyond  the  teaching  of  the  past.  It  was  Vyasa 
who  taught :  "  To  do  good  to  another  is  right ;  to 
injure  another  is  wrong";  and  what  morality  has 
ever  gone  beyond  that  statement,  or  added  fresh 
illumination  to  the  words  of  the  ancient  Seer? 

Is  it  not  the  same  with  Buddhism?  Will  anyone 
pretend  that  the  modern  Buddhist  outdoes  the  Lord 
Buddha  in  the  depth  of  his  wisdom,  in  the  purity 
of  his  morality?  Is  it  not  the  same  with  the  Lord 
Christ?  Is  there  one  Christian  who  will  dare  to 
say  that  any  modern  religious  men  speak  as  He 
spoke,  or  that  His  pure  and  spiritual  teachings  are 


54        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

less  refined,  less  spiritual,  than  those  of  the  Chris- 
tians of  to-day?  On  the  contrary,  we  find  no  evolu- 
tion here,  rather  degeneration.  Religions  grow  less 
powerful  as  generation  succeeds  generation ;  the  Hin- 
duism, the  Buddhism,  the  Christianity,  of  to-day  are 
not  as  pure  as  the  religions  their  Founders  gave 
to  the  world,  and  none  can  bring  forward  a  solitary 
fact  to  show  this  supposed  evolution  of  religion. 

What  then  is  the  other  possibility  ?  What  I  have 
just  hinted  at.  That  great  Teachers  come  forward 
to  reveal  the  divine  Wisdom  and  they  reveal  always 
the  same  truths  in  different  forms.  What  is  the 
fundamental  truth  of  all  religions?  There  is  one 
God.  But  the  Hindu  reads  out  from  his  Upanishat : 
"  One  only,  without  a  second."  The  Hebrew  reads 
the  declaration  of  Moses,  his  leader :  "  Hear,  O 
Israel,  the  Lord  thy  God  is  one  Lord."  The 
Buddhist  tells  us  of  the  Amitabha  from  whom  all 
other  Buddhas  descend.  The  Zoroastrian  tells  us 
of  the  supreme  Ormuzd,  who  is  the  Creator  and 
the  Ruler  of  the  world.  The  Christian  proclaims: 
"  There  is  one  God,  even  the  Father."  The  Mussal- 
man  day  by  day  recites  "  There  is  one  God." 

Every  great  religion,  then,  teaches  in  its  Scrip- 
tures this  doctrine  of  the  unity  of  God.  Some  put 
it  in  a  more  philosophic  form  and  some  in  a  form 
more  anthropomorphic;  but  that  is  according  to  the 
knowledge  or  the  ignorance  of  the  hearer,  and  not 
according  to  the  essence  of  the  truth. 

Then  we  come  to  the  next  great  doctrine,  that 


Theosophy  the  Root  of  All  Religions  55 

God  reveals  Himself  in  a  triple  nature  to  the  world. 
The  Hindu  tells  us  that  Brahman  is:  Sachchida- 
nanda — Being,  Intelligence  and  Bliss.  The  Zoro- 
astrian  teaches  us  of  the  three  forms  of  the  revealed 
Deity.  The  Hebrew  in  his  secret  teaching  again 
reveals  a  Trinity,  and  Egypt  proclaimed  the  triplicity 
of  God.  Greece  and  Rome  pointed  to  three  supreme 
manifestations.  Christianity  speaks  of  Them  as 
"  The  Father,  the  Son  and  the  Holy  Spirit."  But 
if  you  want  to  understand  the  unity  of  all,  look  at 
the  qualities  assigned  to  each  in  the  Trinity,  and 
you  will  find  those  qualities  are  always  the  same. 
There  is  the  power  that  creates ;  there  is  the  power 
that  maintains;  there  is  the  power  that  draws  all 
again  into  itself. 

Does  not  the  Mussalman  speak  of  God  as  Creator  ? 
Does  he  not  speak  of  God  as  Sovereign?  Does  he 
not  tell  us  that  all  will  return  to  Him,  when  he  says : 
"All  shall  perish  save  His  face  ?  "  And  does  it  not 
seem  as  though  that  thought  of  the  Mussalman  were 
an  echo  of  the  ancient  Christian  teaching,  that  in  the 
end  all  things  shall  return  to  God  and  God  shall  be 
all  in  all? 

Pass  on  then  from  that  doctrine  to  divine  mani- 
festation in  the  world;  you  find  the  doctrine  of 
divine  Incarnation,  whether  it  be  in  the  form  of  the 
Hindu  Avatara;  whether  it  be  in  the  form  of  the 
Buddhist,  the  Lord  Buddha;  whether  it  be  in  the 
form  of  the  Christian,  the  Lord  Christ;  whether  it 
be  in  the  form  of  men  whose  Spirit  is  a  fragment 


56        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

of  the  Divine  Spirit;  whether  it  be  in  the  great 
Hierarchies  of  Devas,  the  Angels  and  Archangels 
above  us,  or  in  the  lower  kingdoms  of  the  animals, 
the  vegetables,  and  the  minerals  below  us.  There  is 
one  Life  in  every  form,  and  every  form  is  a  divine 
incarnation;  in  everything  God  abides,  and  there 
is  nothing  that  can  exist  apart  from  His  inspiring 
Spirit  If  the  Hindu  is  taught:  "Thou  art  the 
ETERNAL,"  is  not  the  Christian  taught  that  the  Spirit 
of  God  dwells  in  the  human  body :  "  Know  ye  not 
that  your  body  is  the  temple  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
which  is  in  you  "  and  you  are  "  born  of  God  "  ? 

In  this  idea  of  God  incarnated  in  forms,  you  find 
all  the  great  religions  at  one;  and  if  you  would 
have  a  quotation  from  the  faith  of  Islam,  take  that 
wonderful  passage  written  in  the  Middle  Ages,  when 
none  save  Islam  in  the  West  had  ever  glimpsed 
the  truth  of  evolution.  You  find  the  Islamic  doctor 
saying:  "  I  died  out  of  the  stone,  and  I  became  a 
plant;  I  died  out  of  the  plant,  and  I  became  an 
animal;  I  died  out  of  the  animal,  and  I  became  a 
man.  When  did  I  grow  less  in  dying?  I  shall  die 
out  of  the  man  and  become  an  Angel" ;  and  then  he 
finishes  up  with  the  phrase  I  quoted :  "  All  shall 
perish  save  His  face." 

And  so  we  also  find  among  the  religions  the  doc- 
trine of  the  evolution  of  intelligence,  which  is 
wanted  in  order  to  make  good  the  evolution  of  the 
outer  form.  I  have  just  quoted  that  doctrine  of  re- 
incarnation from  Islam.  I  need  not  quote  it  from 


Theosophy  the  Root  of  All  Religions  57 

Hinduism,  for  all  your  Scriptures  are  full  of  it,  and 
Hinduism  could  not  exist  without  the  central  truth 
of  reincarnation.  Is  it  taught  in  the  Hebrew  faith? 
Turn  to  the  book  of  the  historian  Josephus,  and  you 
will  find  a  little  band  of  Hebrew  soldiers  with  their 
captain,  surrounded  in  a  fort,  with  overwhelming 
forces  besieging  the  fort  and  no  possibility  of 
escape.  Some  of  the  soldiers  began  to  murmur, 
asked  to  surrender;  and  their  captain,  when  he 
wanted  to  persuade  them  not  to  dishonor  themselves 
by  surrender,  appealed  to  the  great  truth  of  reincar- 
nation ;  he  said  to  them  in  effect :  "  If  you  dishonor 
your  place,  and  shame  your  country,  then  will  you 
be  born  again  in  low  and  shameful  forms;  die  for 
your  country ;  die  in  the  fortress  that  you  have  been 
given  to  defend,  and  then  you  shall  be  born  again 
in  happy  births  and  find  the  reward  for  which  you 
give  your  life."  Now  I  recall  that  rather  than  a 
philosophical  teaching,  for  it  shows  you  that  among 
ordinary  soldier-folk  that  doctrine  was  current. 
But  was  it  taught  by  Christianity?  Christ  at  least 
alluded  to  it  when  he  declared  that  S.  John  the  Bap- 
tist was  the  prophet  Elias.  The  early  Church  taught 
it  in  varied  forms,  not  always  in  the  most  philosophic 
form,  as  it  is  taught  in  Hinduism  and  in  Buddhism, 
and  in  modern  Theosophy.  And  that  lay  at  the 
bottom  of  the  Christian  doctrine  that  seems  to  many 
of  you  so  absurd — the  resurrection  of  the  body. 
Turn  to  Tertullian,  an  old  Christian  writer,  and  he 
speaks  of  many  deaths  and  many  resurrections  of 


58        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

the  body,  and  prays  that  he  may  attain  to  the  final 
resurrection  from  the  dead;  in  the  early  Christian 
Church  the  doctrine  of  the  resurrection  of  the  body 
was  not  the  absurdity  of  the  body  which  has  gone 
to  dust  being  gathered  together  again  and  built  into 
the  same  human  form;  for  then  the  earth  itself 
would  not  contain  material  enough  for  the  count- 
less thousands  of  millions  whose  bodies  have  gone 
to  pieces  during  its  lifetime.  It  was  a  resurrection 
of  the  Spirit  in  a  new  body,  the  transmigration  of 
the  soul  into  a  new  form;  and  so  Tertullian  spoke 
of  many  births  and  many  deaths,  and  the  final  resur- 
rection into  a  spiritual  body,  when  death  should  have 
no  power  over  the  liberated  Spirit.  So  also  you 
may  read  of  it  in  Origen  and  in  many  other  Chris- 
tian writers  of  the  early  days.  I  grant  it  vanished ; 
it  vanished  in  those  times  of  ignorance  which  came 
when  the  ancient  learning  of  Greece  and  Rome  was 
anathematised,  and  the  new  learning  of  the  West 
had  not  yet  made  its  way.  But  you  can  trace  it 
down,  generation  after  generation,  in  many  of  the 
heretical  sects  of  Christendom  that  Rome  sought 
to  extirpate.  It  was  taught  among  the  Templars,  it 
was  taught  among  the  Albigenses,  it  was  taught 
among  the  Troubadours,  the  singers  of  France,  and 
by  many  another  sect  denounced  as  heretical  and 
excommunicated.  It  was  taught  in  the  time  of 
Charles  the  Second  in  England  by  his  own  chaplain. 
I  have  a  little  pamphlet  written  in  the  time  of 
Charles  the  Second,  in  which  a  clergyman  of  the 


Theosophy  the  Root  of  All  Religions  59 

Church  of  England  says  that  this  doctrine  in  the 
form  of  pre-existence  is  necessary  to  justify  the 
ways  of  God.  Then  you  trace  it  downwards  to  the 
German  thinkers,  through  Goethe,  through  Fichte, 
through  Schelling,  through  Lessing,  through  many 
another  of  the  great  German  writers.  You  find  it 
in  poet  after  poet.  Was  it  not  Wordsworth  who 
sang: 

Our  birth  is  but  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting ; 

The  soul  that  riseth  with  us,  our  life's  star, 
Hath  elsewhere  had  its  setting, 

And  cometh  from  afar. 

You  find  it  in  the  more  modern  poets ;  in  Brown- 
ing, in  Tennyson,  in  Rossetti,  in  the  poets  that  are 
the  glory  of  the  England  of  the  Victorian  age.  It  has 
never  wholly  died  away.  It  is  coming  back  in  these 
our  days  in  the  West,  and  never  forget  that  Huxley, 
speaking  of  this  doctrine,  declared  that  it  might 
claim  the  support  of  the  great  argument  from  anal- 
ogy. And  so  we  find  that  this  is  one  of  the  doc- 
trines of  the  Eternal  Religion. 

And  then  comes  the  great  doctrine  of  Law. 
Whatever  you  think,  and  desire,  and  act,  bears  its 
fruit  in  life.  None  can  escape  the  action  of  the 
Law.  And  a  solemn  word  comes  out  from  a  Chris- 
tian Teacher :  "  Be  not  deceived ;  God  is  not  mocked. 
Whatsoever  a  man  soweth,  that  shall  he  also  reap." 
It  might  be  a  Hindu  speaking,  for  the  clearness  of 


60        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

the  definition  of  the  law  of  karma.  Whatever  you 
sow  to-day,  to-morrow  you  shall  reap. 

And  then  we  come  to  the  doctrine  of  the  other 
worlds — the  three  worlds  so  familiar  in  the  East  and 
equally  familiar  in  the  West :  the  physical  world  in 
which  we  live,  the  intermediate  world  into  which 
the  soul  passes  at  death,  the  heavenly  world  into 
which  it  again  passes  onward,  when  in  the  inter- 
mediate world  it  has  worked  off  some  of  the  results 
of  its  transgressions.  And,  if  I  had  time  to  do  it, 
I  could  show  you  that  you  will  find  every  one  of 
these,  the  fundamental  doctrines  of  religion,  taught 
in  the  Scriptures  of  the  great  faiths,  and  you  may 
study  them  there  to  convince  yourself  that  what  I 
say  is  true. 

But  if  in  these  great  doctrines  there  is  unity,  what 
about  morality  ?  There  is  only  one  moral  law  spoken 
out  by  the  great  Teachers.  I  quote  it  from  the 
mouth  of  Vyasa :  "  To  do  good  to  another  is  right ; 
to  injure  another  is  wrong."  That  in  the  Hindu 
Scripture  and  in  the  Buddhist  has  been  carried  out 
in  many  phrases,  as  also  in  the  Christian,  along  the 
line  of  most  instructive  teaching,  identical  wherever 
you  choose  to  find  it.  It  is  taught  in  the  laws  of 
Manu  that  forgiveness  of  injuries  is  one  of  the  ten 
duties  of  man.  It  is  taught  by  the  Lord  Buddha: 
"  Hatred  ceases  not  by  hatred  at  any  time ;  hatred 
ceases  by  love."  It  is  taught  by  the  great  teacher 
Lao-tze  in  China:  "To  the  truthful  man  I  will 
speak  truth;  to  the  untruthful  I  will  speak  truth 


Theosophy  the  Root  of  All  Religions  61 

also;  and  all  shall  become  truthful.  To  the  loving 
man  I  will  be  loving;  to  the  unloving  man  I  will 
be  loving  also ;  then  all  shall  become  loving.  To  the 
liberal  I  will  be  liberal ;  to  the  miser  I  will  be  liberal 
also;  and  then  all  men  will  become  liberal."  If 
you  come  down  to  the  time  of  the  Lord  Christ,  you 
know  His  teaching :  "  Love  your  enemies,  bless 
them  that  curse  you,  do  good  to  them  that  hate  you, 
and  pray  for  them  that  despitefully  use  you  and 
persecute  you."  Why?  Because  the  law  of  moral- 
ity is  changeless,  like  all  other  laws  of  nature,  like 
all  other  laws  of  God,  and  because  a  wrong  emotion 
can  only  be  corrected  by  the  opposite  emotion,  the 
right  emotion  which  extinguishes  the  wrong.  If  you 
were  in  a  laboratory,  you  could  take  two  colored 
rays  of  light  and  throw  them  on  the  same  spot,  and 
all  light  would  vanish.  You  could  sound  two  notes 
of  music  and  arrange  them  so  that  the  one  extin- 
guished the  other;  for  the  two  sounds  would  pro- 
duce silence.  So  you  can  choose  rays  of  light,  the 
one  of  which  intensifies  the  other;  sounds,  the  one 
of  which  intensifies  the  other.  And  so  wfth  emo- 
tion. If  you  meet  a  hate  emotion  with  a  love  emo- 
tion, the  love  emotion  extinguishes  the  hatred  and 
there  is  peace.  If  you  meet  irritability  with  pa- 
tience, if  you  meet  wrong  with  forgiveness,  if  you 
meet  anger  with  gentleness  and  falsehood  with  truth, 
then  the  opposites  extinguish  each  other  and  calm 
and  equilibrium  result,  where  otherwise  strife  would 
be.  And  so  you  learn  why  all  great  moral  Teachers 


62        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

have  taught  the  same  moral  doctrine,  have  declared 
the  same  precepts.  And  Theosophy,  putting  them 
all  side  by  side,  and  pointing  to  that  perfect  unani- 
mity, after  showing  the  teachings,  gives  the  scientific 
reason,  only  because  men  no  longer  are  willing  to 
learn  by  the  authority  of  the  Holy  Ones,  but  demand 
a  proof  that  convinces  the  reason,  a  demonstration 
intelligible  by  the  mind.  And  that  is  the  only  dif- 
ference between  Theosophical  morality  and  the 
morality  of  all  the  great  faiths  of  the  world.  We 
explain  the  reason  where  they  formulate  a  com- 
mand; and  the  only  object  in  doing  it  is  to  suit  the 
time,  because  men  have  grown  skeptical.  No  longer 
is  the  authority  of  the  Manu,  of  the  Buddha,  of  the 
Christ  an  authority  before  which  men  bow  their 
heads.  They  answer :  "  Why  ?  Why  should  I 
obey?  Why  should  I  return  good  for  evil?  Why 
should  I  not  give  blow  for  blow,  and  curse  for 
curse  ?"  And  so  out  of  the  treasures  of  the  Ancient 
Wisdom  the  science  of  morality  is  brought  forward 
as  the  experimental  demonstration  of  the  truth  of 
the  ancient  teaching. 

Theosophy  is  nothing  new;  for  in  religion  or  in 
morals  it  gathers  together  out  of  the  gardens  of  the 
past  all  the  flowers  of  truth  and  the  flowers  of  moral- 
ity, and  binds  them  together  with  the  string  of 
scientific  demonstration,  in  order  that  men  may 
obey  in  a  skeptical  and  intellectual  generation. 
There  lies  its  value. 

But  there  is  one  thing  in  which  religions  differ; 


Theosophy  the  Root  of  All  Religions  63 

they  differ  in  their  ceremonies,  they  differ  in  what 
we  call  their  sacraments,  they  differ  in  their  outer 
forms,  in  the  customs  they  impose  on  their  ad- 
herents. Now,  Theosophy,  as  such,  includes  none 
of  these.  While  it  is  essentially  the  Supreme  Knowl- 
edge that  we  looked  at  the  day  before  yesterday, 
while  in  a  secondary  sense  it  is  the  consensus  of 
doctrine  and  morality  everywhere  accepted,  every- 
where taught,  millennium  after  millennium;  it  does 
not  embrace  any  rite,  any  ceremony,  any  sacrament, 
any  custom — only  the  universal,  the  everlasting. 

What  use  then  is  Theosophy  to  people  of  a  special 
faith  ?  It  explains.  Take  a  sacrament.  The  Hindu 
has  his  samskaras ;  the  Buddhist  has  his ;  the  Chris- 
tion  has  his ;  the  Parsi  has  his ;  the  Mussalman  has 
his.  What  is  a  sacrament  ?  It  is  very  well  explained  in 
a  phrase  that  will  be  unfamiliar  to  most  of  you.  I 
am  taking  it  from  a  Christian  catechism :  "  A  sacra- 
ment," says  the  Church  of  England,  "  is  the  out- 
ward and  visible  sign  of  an  inward,  and  spiritual 
grace."  A  perfect  definition ;  and  it  goes  on  to  say 
for  the  Christian,  "  ordained  by  Christ  Himself  " ; 
that  is  the  local  application — the  other  is  a  universal 
definition. 

There  is  always  in  a  sacrament  a  Material  Ob- 
ject. It  may  be  the  pinda  that  you  use  in  your 
shraddha;  it  may  be  the  water  that  you  use  in 
your  tarpana;  it  may  be  the  objects  that  the 
Parsi  spreads  out  after  a  beloved  friend  has 
passed  away  from  earth;  it  may  be  the  cord  he 


64         Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

ties  round  his  waist,  or  the  sacred  thread  thrown 
across  the  shoulder;  it  may  be  the  water  of  the 
Christian  baptism,  or  the  bread  and  wine  in  the 
sacrifice  of  the  Altar,  in  the  Holy  Communion. 
But  wherever  there  is  a  sacrament  there  is  a 
material  object  Then  there  is  a  formula;  we 
call  it  a  Word  of  Power.  It  is  the  mantra  chanted 
by  the  priest ;  it  is  the  sacred  sentence  spoken  by  the 
Parsi  mobed ;  it  is  the  words  of  consecration  spoken 
by  the  Christian  priest.  There  is  a  gesture,  a  Sign 
of  Power.  It  matters  not  what  the  religion;  there 
are  forms  and  signs  that  each  use  to  consecrate  the 
material  object,  and  following  those  a  change  ap- 
pears. As  the  priest  in  the  Roman  Catholic  Mass 
spreads  out  his  hand  over  the  unconsecrated  wafer 
and  makes  over  it  the  Sign  of  Power — like  the 
Hindu  mudra — making  the  sign  of  the  Cross  above 
the  wafer  as  he  pronounces  the  Word  of  Power: 
"This  is  my  body,"  in  the  Latin  tongue ;  there  comes 
down  a  flash  of  light ;  there  burst  out  from  the 
consecrated  object  waves  of  radiance  that  fill  the 
whole  church  with  their  glory,  and  the  Angels  come 
around  to  see  the  wondrous  sight,  and  the  great 
power  of  the  Christ  pours  down  upon  His  assem- 
bled worshippers  through  the  consecrated  symbol  in 
the  sacrament,  which  is  the  means  of  the  spiritual 
grace. 

So  in  your  own  ceremonies,  when  the  mantra 
is  chanted,  when  the  sign  is  made,  when  the  object 
is  set  apart  for  divine  service,  and  the  symbol  is 


Theosophy  the  Root  of  All  Religions  65 

traced  on  the  stand  where  the  image  is  to  be ;  when 
the  words  are  spoken  that  consecrate  it,  and  draw 
the  magnetism  of  the  worshipped  Deva  down  upon 
that  form — then,  from  that  time  onwards,  the  image 
is  sacred ;  from  that  time  onwards  magnetism  pours 
from  and  through  it  upon  the  worshipper ;  and  all 
who  worship  add  to  the  sacred  power,  and  thoughts 
play  and  interplay  between  the  sacred  object  and 
the  heart  that  seeks  God.  That  is  the  meaning  of  a 
sacrament.  All  religions  have  them;  all  religions 
use  them.  And  we  Theosophists,  we  say  that  every 
one  ordained  by  the  man  who  knows  is  a  means 
of  grace  to  the  worshipper,  whereby  the  music  of 
heaven  comes  down  and  harmonizes  the  discords  of 
the  earth. 

And  so  to  each  religion  we  come  as  the  explainer. 
To  the  Hindu  we  explain  the  mechanism  of  the 
shraddha;  to  the  Christian  the  mechanism  of  his 
own  sacraments;  to  the  Parsi,  the  Mussalman,  and 
the  Hebrew,  the  way  in  which  these  powers  work. 

But  Theosophy,  as  such,  adopts  none  of  them. 
"Let  that  which  is  the  outer  bridge,"  it  says,  "be 
trodden  by  those  who  belong  to  a  particular  faith  ; 
all  bridges  between  earth  and  heaven  are  holy,  and 
every  religion  has  its  own  bridge,  suitable  to  the 
souls  that  are  born  into  the  faith  which  has  made 
that  bridge.  But  when  you  find  the  way  to  the 
Highest  in  the  supreme  Wisdom,  bridges  are  no 
longer  needed.  While  you  need  them,  use  those 
of  your  own  faith,  and  respect  those  of  your 


66         Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

brothers.  But  when  you  can  find  your  own  way  to 
God,  then,  as  we  heard  the  Dean  of  S.  Paul's  de- 
clare :  'Why  should  a  man  in  whom  is  springing  up 
the  water  of  everlasting  life  turn  to  the  cisterns  of 
the  exoteric  faith'?" 

That  is  true;  but  because  they  are  beautiful  and 
useful  and  hallowed  by  the  reverence  of  many  gen- 
erations, never  let  anyone  who  has  grown  beyond 
them  speak  one  word  against  them  to  those  to  whom 
they  are  the  bread  and  the  water  of  life.  Let  not 
your  wisdom  mislead  the  ignorant,  for  you  were 
ignorant  in  your  day,  and  by  these  very  methods 
you  climbed  to  the  knowledge  that  you  now  possess. 
And  so  explain  them;  teach  them;  remove  the 
superstition  that  injures,  and  gradually  give  the  ex- 
planation that  kills  skepticism  by  knowledge,  and 
superstition  by  knowledge  also,  and  realize  that  di- 
vine Wisdom  clothes  itself  in  many  ways,  and  that 
God  gives  Himself  to  every  Spirit  that  loves  Him 
in  the  form  which  suits  the  stage  of  the  unfolding 
of  the  life. 

There  lies  our  use,  and  therefore  has  Theosophy 
been  the  reviver  of  religions  everywhere.  You 
know  what  it  has  done  for  Hinduism.  You  heard 
to-day  the  statement  of  a  high  official  in  Ceylon  that 
the  greatest  agent  in  reviving  Buddhism  had  been 
the  work  of  the  Theosophical  Society.  You  may 
find  the  same  statement  in  one  of  the  books  issued 
by  the  Government  of  India.  You  may  find  the 
same  said  by  many  who,  by  Theosophy,  have  been 


Theosophy  the  Root  of  All  Religions  67 

brought  back  to  the  faith  of  their  fathers,  and  again 
are  numbered  amid  the  adherents  of  religion.  You 
find  it  in  the  West  in  the  growth  of  Mysticism,  in 
the  gradual  rising  above  the  letter  that  killeth  and 
the  realization  of  the  Spirit  that  giveth  life. 

If  you  ask  when  a  man  should  drop  the  external 
form  and  trust  to  the  Spirit  within,  my  answer 
would  be:  when  the  form  no  longer  helps;  when 
the  ceremony  no  longer  is  a  channel  of  divine  life ; 
when  you  feel  up-springing  within  you  the  power 
of  the  hidden  God;  then  the  use  of  the  ceremony 
for  you  is  over,  and  its  value  lies  behind. 

What  does  the  Sannyasi  do?  He  has  come  up 
through  the  twice-born;  but  when  he  breaks  the 
thread  and  throws  away  the  marks  of  the  Brah- 
mana,  then  he  has  become  above  all  castes,  because 
for  him  the  value  of  the  caste  system  is  over.  At 
last,  when  from  the  Spirit  within  you,  there  comes 
a  law  higher,  more  exacting,  more  compelling,  than 
the  law  without,  then  trust  the  Spirit,  for  the  ideal 
then  will  be  stronger  for  you  than  the  words  of  an 
outer  code.  But  as  long  as  the  outer  code  is  more 
compelling  than  the  inner  force,  as  long  as  you 
need  the  crutch  of  a  system  without  which  you  can- 
not walk,  so  long  cling  to  the  system,  practise  the 
ceremony ;  its  use  for  you  is  not  yet  of  the  past. 

And  let  me  say  one  last  word  on  this  part  of 
our  subject:  that  there  is  no  country  in  the  world 
where  the  spreading  of  Theosophy  is  so  vitally  nec- 
essary as  on  this  vast  peninsula  of  our  Indian  Em- 


68         Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

pire.  In  India  all  the  great  religions  of  the  world 
are  living  side  by  side.  The  vast  majority  belong 
to  the  Sanatana  Dharma,  the  ancient  faith  of  the 
Hindus.  But  you  have  many  others  amidst  you. 
You  have  some  Buddhists  amongst  you  in  India 
proper,  and  in  Burma  and  Ceylon  the  mass  of  the 
population  is  Buddhist.  You  have  some  Hebrews 
scattered  over  your  land.  You  have  some  fifty  mil- 
lions of  the  children  of  Islam  who  belong  to  India. 
You  have  Christians  who  have  lived  here  since  the 
time  of  the  second  century  after  the  beginning  of 
the  Christian  era.  Down  the  western  coasts  are 
Christian  colonies  that  trace  their  history  back  to 
the  second  century  after  the  reputed  birth  of  Christ. 
Are  you  to  cast  them  out?  But  they  are  Indians, 
as  you  are. 

Twelve  hundred  years  of  life  have  given  the 
Mussalman  a  right  to  call  himself  a  born  Indian, 
who  has  his  own  place  in  the  nation.  The  Christian 
of  sixteen  centuries,  he  may  well  claim  his  place. 
The  Buddhist  has  nearly  twenty-five  centuries  be- 
hind him,  since  the  holy  feet  of  the  Lord  Buddha 
trod  the  Indian  land.  The  Zoroastrian  came  to  you 
when  driven  by  persecution  out  of  his  own  coun- 
try, and  you  gave  him  welcome;  you  were  glad  to 
have  him  here;  and  though  the  Parsi  body  be  a 
small  one,  it  is  respected  and  loved  over  all  the 
Indian  land.  There  is  not  one  that  you  would 
drive  away,  if  you  could.  There  is  not  one  of  them 
who  is  really  a  foreigner  in  the  great  house  of  the 


Theosophy  the  Root  of  All  Religions  69 

Motherland,  who  stretches  her  arms  of  love  around 
them  all  alike.  She  knows  that  there  is  not  and 
there  must  not  be  any  outcaste  in  the  Indian  family, 
and  the  Indian  Nation  includes  Hindu  and  Mussal- 
man,  Buddhist,  Parsi  and  Hebrew,  Christian  and 
Sikh  and  Jain;  every  one  of  the  faiths  is  in  your 
land. 

What  then  will  you  do  ?  Quarrel  with  each  other, 
try  to  convert  each  other?  You  cannot,  for  the 
Hindu  takes  none  into  his  fold  who  is  not  born 
Hindu.  Is  not  the  better  way  to  understand  ?  For, 
if  you  understand,  you  will  love.  Hatred  grows  out 
of  ignorance,  and  when  we  do  not  know  our  brother 
we  may  strike  our  brother  in  the  dark,  because  we 
do  not  see  his  face.  The  Christian  in  England  may 
doubt  the  Hindu  in  India.  The  Mussalman  in 
Turkey  may  challenge  the  Christian  here.  They  are 
separated  by  thousands  of  miles  of  land  and  sea; 
but  you  live  side  by  side  in  the  same  street.  You  go 
in  and  out  with  each  other;  you  meet  each  other 
in  business,  in  society;  you  know  each  other;  and 
you  cannot  hate  if  once  you  understand. 

And  so  if  you  realize  that  all  religions  are  one; 
if  without  calling  yourselves  Theosophists — I  care 
nothing  for  labels — you  take  the  Theosophic  spirit 
that  all  faiths  are  one  and  all  are  ways  to  God ;  if  you 
believe  that  great  saying  of  Shri  Krshna :  "Mankind 
comes  to  me  along  many  roads,  and  on  whatever 
road  a  man  approaches  me,  on  that  road  do  I  wel- 
come him  " ;  if  you  remember  to  think  of  it  and  live 


70         Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

it;  if  you  drop  every  name  of  hatred;  if  you  never 
speak  of  the  infidel,  of  the  outcaste,  of  the 
mlechchha ;  if  you  speak  of  "  my  brother  Mussal- 
man,  my  brother  Hindu,  my  brother  Christian,"  ah ! 
then  India  shall  rise  to  what  she  ought  to  be — the 
model  nation  for  spirituality,  the  model  nation  for 
religion;  for  all  here  shall  live  as  children  of  One 
God,  as  travelers  to  One  Home,  sharers  of  One 
Hope.  That  is  Theosophy,  and  that  is  the  spirit 
that  will  make  India  great ! 


THE  THEOSOPHICAL  SOCIETY,  ITS  MEAN- 
ING, PURPOSE,  AND  FUNCTIONS 

LECTURE  IV 
FRIENDS  : 

I  ask  you  now  to  turn  your  thought  from  the 
Theosophy  that  I  have  been  expounding  for  the  last 
three  afternoons,  to  the  Society,  the  Theosophical 
Society,  with  which  I  am  to  deal  tonight.  The 
Theosophical  Society  exists  for  the  sake  of  study- 
ing and  spreading  Theosophy — to  spread  the 
thought  that  the  direct  knowledge  of  God  is  obtain- 
able by  man ;  to  point  to  that  open  road  to  the  Mas- 
ters of  the  Wisdom  which  they  may  tread  who  will ; 
to  go  about  among  the  religions  of  the  world  point- 
ing out  their  common  basis  and  trying  to  evoke 
mutual  tolerance  by  understanding.  In  those  three 
subjects,  as  it  were,  you  may  see  what  we  mean 
when  we  speak  of  Theosophy.  Now,  it  strikes  some 
people  as  strange  that  a  Society  that  exists  for  the 
sake  of  studying  and  spreading  Theosophy  should 
not  make  the  acceptance  of  Theosophy  a  condition 
for  admission  into  its  ranks.  Among  the  many 
queer  things  that  people  put  to  the  credit  of  Theoso- 
phy, many,  I  think,  regard  this  as  one  of  the  queerest 
and  most  eccentric :  "  You  are  a  Society  for  spread- 

71 


72         Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

ing  certain  ideas,  and  yet  you  do  not  make  accept- 
ance of  the  ideas  a  condition  of  coming  into  your 
Society.  How  then  do  you  expect  that  your  mem- 
bers will  spread  them  ?  What  guarantee  have  you  that 
your  Society  will  succeed  in  the  work  for  which  it 
exists  ?  "  And  the  question  is  a  very  natural  ques- 
tion. We  are  so  accustomed  to  the  imposition  of 
creeds,  we  are  told  so  often  that  we  ought  to  be- 
lieve this,  or  ought  not  to  believe  that,  that  when 
we  come  across  a  body  of  presumably  sane  people 
who  are  gathered  together  for  a  particular  object, 
for  the  gathering,  the  studying,  and  the  spreading 
of  certain  ideas,  we  might  naturally  say :  "  Well, 
you  must  make  acceptance  of  these  ideas  a  condi- 
tion of  admission."  What  would  a  Chemical 
Society  be  unless  chemists  were  its  members  ?  What 
would  be  the  use  of  a  Geographical  Society  unless 
its  members  traveled  over  the  world,  extending  the 
limits  of  our  knowledge  of  geography?  and  so  on. 
And  we  seem  for  a  moment  to  stand  apart,  with 
our  absence  of  a  dogmatic  or  credal  basis,  on  which 
our  Society  should  be  built. 

And  yet  we  have  a  very  real,  a  very  serious,  rea- 
son for  not  asking  from  any  human  being,  when  he 
applies  for  admission :  "  What  do  you  believe  ?  " 
We  do  not  ask  of  a  man  whether  he  is  a  Hindu  or  a 
Buddhist,  whether  he  is  a  Parsi,  or  a  Mussalman, 
whether  he  is  a  Hebrew,  a  Jain  or  a  Sikh.  We  only 
ask  him  one  thing:  "Are  you  willing  to  accept  our 
objects?  "  And  the  first  of  those  is  to  form  a  nucleus 


The  Theosophical  Society  73 

of  universal  Brotherhood,  without  distinction  of 
creed,  of  sex,  of  race,  of  caste  or  color.  To  live 
with  men  as  forming  a  Brotherhood,  that  is  the 
great  object  of  the  Society;  and  the  other  objects 
are  to  study  comparative  religion  and  mythology,  to 
study  the  latent  powers  in  nature  and  man.  Such 
are  our  formulated  objects.  How  do  we  suppose 
then  that  our  members  will  come  to  accept  Theoso- 
phy  and  to  spread  it  ?  It  is  because  we  hold  that  no 
man  should  accept  the  formulation  of  a  truth  which 
he  himself  has  not  studied,  and  received  because  he 
sees  it  to  be  true.  It  is  because  we  believe  that  the 
only  condition  of  intellectual  advance  is  the  free 
exercise  of  the  intelligence  on  every  subject  which 
is  submitted  to  it;  because  we  think  that  to  profess 
'  belief '  without  investigation  shows  an  entirely 
wrong  conception  of  truth  in  the  human  being,  espe- 
cially if  that  profession  of  a  belief  be  imposed  by 
authority,  or  be  made  a  condition  of  gaining  any 
advantage.  Knowledge  is  not  to  be  bargained  with, 
truth  is  not  to  be  bought.  Wnether  you  really  be- 
lieve a  truth  or  not  depends  entirely  upon  whether 
you  see  it  to  be  true;  and  you  can  only  see  it  by 
using  your  reason  to  judge  it,  and  by  your  own 
study  assimilating  it  until  it  becomes  part  of  your 
mind.  Truth  is  seen  the  moment  that  in  climbing 
up  the  mountain-side  of  knowledge  you  reach  a  point 
where  that  truth  becomes  visible  to  your  eyes.  What 
would  you  think  of  a  man  who,  pointing  to  the 
mountain-side,  before  he  would  allow  you  to  climb 


74        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

up  it,  said :  "  You  must  believe  that  when  you  reach 
half-way  up,  you  will  see  such  and  such  a  town  on 
the  plain  below"  ?  The  man  would  say :  "  Let 
me  climb  up  it  and  then  I  will  know  whether  or  not 
there  be  a  town  on  the  plain  you  mention.  I  have 
never  been  there.  I  have  never  seen  it.  I  do  not 
care  to  take  the  statement  on  your  authority,  and 
until  I  have  seen  it  there  is  no  reason  why  you 
should  demand  that  I  should  believe  in  its  exist- 
ence." As  you  grow  in  knowledge,  one  truth  after 
another  comes  within  the  sight  of  your  intelligence. 
To  profess  to  believe  before  you  have  studied  is  irra- 
tional and  foolish.  Study  first;  believe  afterwards. 
But  you  may  say :  "  How  are  you  sure  that  you 
will  come  to  truth  ?  "  First,  we  have  faith  in  truth ; 
we  have  faith  that  it  only  needs  to  be  seen  in  order 
to  be  accepted;  and  we  think  that  is  so,  because 
man,  by  his  constituted  nature,  has,  as  one  aspect 
of  his  consciousness,  the  power  of  knowing,  of 
cognizing,  that  which  is  outside  himself.  His  feel- 
ings are  within  him,  internal  changes;  his  will  is 
within  him,  the  self-determination  to  action ;  but  his 
intellect  has  eyes  which  open  outwards  to  the  world 
around  him;  and  as  he  is  able  to  cognize,  so  he  is 
able  to  know.  "  Its  nature  is  knowledge  " — so  is  it 
written  in  an  Upanishat  with  regard  to  the  intellect. 
You  are  a  reflection  of  the  divine  Nature,  and  one 
aspect  of  that  Nature  is  knowledge.  Your  divine 
aspect  of  knowledge  answers  to  God  in  the  outer 
universe,  where  He  is  veiled  in  the  objects  of  knowl- 


The  Theosophical  Society  75 

edge.  The  God  within  looking  out  to  the  God  with- 
out knows  the  objects,  assimilates  them,  and  repro- 
duces them ;  but  the  condition  of  that  is  the  free 
action  of  the  intelligence,  without  a  bribe  to  lure  and 
without  a  threat  to  paralyze.  Hence,  we  are  in 
favor  of  free  inquiry,  and  we  realize  that  truth  is  so 
great  a  thing,  so  answers  to  man's  nature,  which  is 
truth,  that  when  the  truth  within  sees  the  truth 
without,  the  intellect  is  like  the  string  which  answers 
to  a  single  note.  As  you  tune  the  violin  with  an- 
other violin,  or  with  the  piano  which  is  to  accompany 
it,  and  as  the  striking  of  the  notes  is  enough  to 
know  whether  there  is  accord  or  discord,  so  the 
striking  of  the  note  of  the  truth  in  man  by  the  fact 
without  sounds  out  an  accord  or  discord  that  the 
man  can  realize,  for  every  falsehood  is  discord  and 
every  truth  is  accord ;  and  when  the  without  and  the 
within  answer  to  each  other  perfectly  there  is  truth, 
and  in  no  other  way.  That  is  one  reason  why  we 
ask  for  no  profession  of  belief. 

There  is  another.  We  are  evolving  creatures ;  we 
have  not  reached  the  end  of  evolution;  we  do  not 
know  the  whole  of  truth.  Truth  is  infinite  as  God 
is  infinite;  and  an  infinite  universe  within  us  and 
without  us  stretches  beyond  all  bounds  of  space  or 
time.  How  shall  we  at  this  early  stage  of  evolution, 
how  shall  we  dare  to  formulate  a  truth  to  impose 
upon  our  brethren,  when  we  only  know  a  fragment 
of  any  truth,  and  often  know  that  fragment  but 
imperfectly  ?  We  may  make  a  statement  of  a  truth. 


76        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

It  is  a  milestone  on  the  road  of  evolution.  And  as 
a  milestone  it  is  interesting;  it  shows  the  point  to 
which  human  thought  has  traveled  on  some  particu- 
lar truth  in  nature ;  but  the  place  of  the  milestone  is 
on  the  side  of  the  road  to  mark  out  how  far  a  man 
has  traveled ;  and  if  instead  of  placing  the  truth  as  a 
milestone  on  the  road,  you  take  it  and  place  it  as  a 
dogma,  a  barrier  across  the  road,  then  how  shall 
future  generations  win  their  way  to  higher  truth 
and  wider  knowledge?  They  will  have  first  to  stop, 
and  then  to  shatter  the  obstacle.  We  have  done  it, 
many  of  us,  in  the  bitter  day  when  we  found  that 
what  we  had  been  taught  as  truth  was  crumbling 
under  the  touch  of  reason,  and  breaking  down  under 
our  feet  like  a  rotten  bridge  in  the  hour  of  our 
sorest  need.  Shall  we  make  this  mistake  again? 
We  had  to  break  the  dogmas  of  our  ancestors.  Shall 
we  make  new  dogmas  for  our  posterity  to  break, 
and  to  suffer  in  the  breaking  as  we  have  suffered? 
Rather  let  us  trust  the  truth  as  we  trust  the  sun- 
light. You  do  not  need  to  prove  the  sun.  It  proves 
itself  by  illuminating  every  object  on  which  it  falls; 
and  truth  proves  itself  by  illuminating  the  whole 
universe  of  discourse.  No  proof  is  wanted  for 
truth.  It  proves  itself  by  its  own  inherent  light. 
Hence  among  us  no  one  speaks  with  authority  of 
compulsion.  The  wisest  cannot  force  the  most 
ignorant  to  accept  what  he  says. 

Such  then  is  the  general  principle  of  the  Society. 
It  follows  from  it  that  what  I  shall  say  now  as  to 


The  Theosophical  Society  77 

its  meaning,  its  purposes  and  functions  are  my  opin- 
ions of  its  meaning,  of  its  purposes  and  functions. 
They  are  not  binding  on  any  member  of  the  Society 
here  any  more  than  they  are  binding  on  any  stranger 
who  for  the  first  time  may  listen  to  my  speech.  No 
Theosophist  is  obliged  to  accept  what  the  President 
of  the  Theosophical  Society  may  state  to  be  his  or 
her  opinions.  They  are  for  you  to  judge,  for  you 
tojest,  for  you  to  accept  or  reject  as  you  will ;  and 
I  only  claim  such  authority  as  comes  from  your 
recognition  of  the  truth  of  what  I  say.  If  your 
mind  answers  to  mine  and  sees  the  truth,  then  I 
may  help  you  by  having  spoken  out  a  truth  that 
you  held  inarticulately  within  yourself,  and  only 
recognized  when  it  was  put  into  intelligible  words. 
""  Now,  what  is  the  meaning  of  the  Theosophical 
Society?  By  the  word  meaning  I  intend  to  say 
significance,  its  place  in  the  world.  What  does  it 
mean,  this  strange  new  portent  of  a  dogmaless  So- 
ciety appearing  in  the  fourth  quarter  of  the  nine- 
teenth century?  May  I  make  you  a  picture  which 
will  show  you  what  I  think  that  its  meaning  is? 
Imagine  stretched  out  before  your  eyes  some  great 
maps  or  charts  of  the  world.  Imagine  that  you  are 
looking  at  those  charts  and  that,  instead  of  showing 
you  mountain  ranges  and  river-courses  and  the 
places  where  there  are  cities  or  forests  or  plains, 
these  imaginary  charts  represent  the  currents  of 
opinion,  represent  the  thoughts  of  men,  represent 
the  movements  to  be  found  in  the  world  of  thought, 


78        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

represent  the  various  religions  now  living  among 
men,  perchance  also  those  of  the  past.  Look  in 
imagination  at  such  a  picture,  and  imagine  that  you 
may  see  there  that  every  current  of  thought  is  given 
its  own  color,  so  that  you  can  follow  it  from  the 
beginning  to  the  ending;  that  every  religion  is 
marked  by  some  special  hue,  so  that  you  may  see  it 
rising,  passing  over  the  countries  of  the  world,  es- 
tablished in  century  after  century,  mingling  occa- 
sionally with  other  religions,  influencing  them,  in- 
fluenced by  them,  with  many  a  rill  of  thought  and 
tradition  flowing  into  the  main  current  of  the 
stream,  and  perchance  a  little  changing  its  color  by 
the  admixture  of  another.  Imagine  that  as  you 
study  with  great  interest  this  wonderfully  interest- 
ing map  of  human  thought,  you  see  the  rising  of  a 
new  kind  of  thought,  of  some  new  movement  in 
literature,  in  art,  in  science,  which  makes  its  way 
among  men.  As  you  see  these  many  streams  and 
currents,  a  great  network  over  the  whole  world, 
representing  intellectual  and  devotional  movements, 
imagine  that  you  see  that  they  all  originate  in  some 
great  Teacher,  that  each  is  colored,  as  it  were,  by 
the  color  of  the  Teacher,  and  so  shows  the  line  of 
its  descent  and  its  origin  in  the  far-off  past;  and 
then  imagine  that  you  see  these  Teachers  gathered 
together  as  men  may  gather  in  a  great  group  or 
Lodge,  and  realize  that  all  those  Teachers  and 
many  others  represent  the  great  White  Brotherhood 
composed  of  the  Guardians  of  the  race.  You  would 


The  Theosophical  Society  79 

see  come  down  from  Them  the  many  impulses 
which  modify  and  change  the  thoughts  of  men. 
You  would  see  one  stream  of  science  flowing  down 
into  Middle  Age  Europe,  meeting  with  many  dif- 
ficulties, gradually  overcoming  them,  and  growing 
wider  and  wider  and  the  current  stronger  and 
stronger,  until  in  the  nineteenth  century,  as  it  were, 
it  spreads  out  into  a  great  lake,  in  which  the  waters 
are  ready  for  the  fertilizing,  for  the  irrigation,  of 
the  whole  intellectual  world.  And  when  you  have 
looked  at  this  and  have  studied  it  and  grasped  its 
wonderful  meaning,  then  your  eyes  may  be  struck 
by  a  white  line,  pure  and  spotless  white,  that  has  its 
origin  in  the  White  Lodge  itself,  and  flows  out  of 
that  as  a  white  stream  in  which  all  the  colors  have 
lost  their  distinctive  hue;  and  you  see  it  pure  and 
white,  although  containing  and  blending  all.  You 
follow  that  white  river  as  it  flows  down  into  the 
world  of  men ;  you  see  it  stopping  at  one  point  after 
another  and  making,  as  it  were,  a  lake  here,  and  a 
tank  there,  and  a  pond  in  another  place;  but  ever 
they  are  full  of  this  white  light-giving  water,  for  it 
flows  from  the  great  Lodge  which  is  its  source,  from 
which  its  light  is  taken ;  and  you  will  see  how  it 
goes  to  one  center  after  another  established  in  an- 
cient times,  where  other  Teachers  from  the  great 
Lodge  have  been,  and  have  made  magnetic  condi- 
tions for  the  spread  of  a  new  impulse  of  spiritual 
life.  You  would  see  it  touching  a  religion,  and  the 
religion  glowing  out  in  brighter  color,  brighter,  but 


80        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

not  losing  its  distinctive  hue;  and  you  would  see  it 
touch  some  part  of  science,  and  new  discoveries 
would  break  out  wherever  that  fertilizing  water 
touches;  and  as  you  trace  it  onwards  and  onwards, 
you  would  sometimes  see  a  little  village  which  sends 
out  many  streams  of  this  white  light,  and  you 
would  see  a  great  town  all  dark ;  and  gradually  you 
would  realize  that  you  were  looking  at  the  Theo- 
sophical Society,  and  the  great  centers  it  has  made 
in  different  lands;  and  some  that  are  large  have 
but  little  of  this  white  current  of  light,  and  some 
that  are  small  are  shining  brilliantly  in  all  direc- 
tions; and  you  would  see  that  ever  and  always  it 
remains  in  unbroken  touch  with  its  source,  so  that 
its  flood  can  never  be  exhausted,  so  that  the  light 
from  the  living  water  can  never  grow  dim.  And 
as  you  study  that,  a  new  conception  would  perhaps 
come  up  in  your  minds  of  the  way  in  which  the 
Lodge  is  working,  of  the  way  in  which  the  great 
White  Brotherhood  is  laboring;  all  comes  from 
Them  through  many  messengers,  but  this  white 
stream  of  life  comes  from  the  Lodge  as  a  whole, 
and  remains  as  its  vehicle  in  the  world. 

Drop  my  imaginary  maps,  and  take  another 
image.  An  embassy  comes  out  from  the  King  and 
carries  his  message  to  some  far-off  land.  An  em- 
bassy does  not  exist  for  itself ;  it  exists  for  the  sake 
of  the  King  who  sends  it,  for  the  sake  of  the  coun- 
try to  which  it  carries  his  message.  It  is  a  message 
from  a  King  to  a  friendly  people.  Such  an  em- 


The  Theosophical  Society  81 

bassy  to  all  the  religions  of  the  world  is  the  Theo- 
sophical Society  in  its  meaning;  it  brings  a  message 
from  the  great  King ;  it  comes  to  a  country  in  order 
to  tell  its  message;  it  has  no  object  to  gain  for  it- 
self, no  reward  which  it  can  claim  for  obeying  its 
Ruler;  it  carries  its  message  and  proclaims  it,  and 
leaves  it  to  be  accepted  or  rejected  as  the  particular 
nation  wills.  Such  an  embassy  from  the  Masters 
of  the  Race  is  the  Theosophical  Society  to  the  re- 
ligions and  nations  of  the  world. 

The  idea  is  not  a  new  one.  When  the  Apostles 
of  the  Christ  went  forth — as  sheep  in  the  midst  of 
wolves,  He  said — you  may  find  that  one  of  them, 
proclaiming  His  message,  declared :  "  We  are  am- 
bassadors for  Christ,  as  though  God  did  beseech 
you  by  us."  It  is  a  forecast  of  the  world-wide 
mission  of  the  Theosophical  Society.  The  Society 
is  an  ambassador  from  the  great  White  Lodge,  and 
that  is  its  meaning  in  the  world,  a  messenger  from 
the  world's  King  for  the  helping  and  the  enlighten- 
ing of  His  people.  You  say  that  is  a  mighty  claim, 
that  it  is  a  lofty,  almost  audacious,  claim?  It  has 
been  made  over  and  over  again  in  the  past  by  the 
embassies  that  have  been  brought  by  the  messengers 
of  the  Lodge.  Every  religion  has  justified  itself  in 
time,  and  we  have  no  fear  that  this  latest  messenger 
shall  not  also  justify  itself,  and  prove  that  its  claim 
is  true.  It  has  only  been  in  the  wrorld  for  seven- 
and-thirty  years ;  yet  you  find  some  four-and-twenty 
thousand  men  and  women  in  all  the  countries  of  the 


82        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

civilized  world  as  active  working  members  in  its 
ranks.  We  need  not,  I  think,  be  ashamed  of  our 
growth  in  the  time,  if  we  remember  the  slowness  of 
such  growth  in  the  past,  and  remember  that  we 
have  come  to  a  more  skeptical  generation  than  the 
world  has  ever  known  before. 

And  so  we  stand  here  as  a  witness  to  the  great 
White  Lodge.  Henry  Steele  Olcott,  our  first  Presi- 
dent, was  appointed  by  that  Lodge  President  for 
life.  When  he  lay  on  his  death-bed  he,  at  the  com- 
mand of  the  Masters  who  had  appointed  him,  nomi- 
nated his  successor  by  Their  authority.  It  was  for 
the  Society  to  accept  or  to  reject  that  nomination 
from  its  real  Heads.  And  in  order  that  you  may 
understand  the  meaning  of  that  nomination,  and  the 
meaning  of  the  answer  made  by  the  Theosophical 
Society  all  the  world  over,  let  me  remind  you  that 
when  the  Society  was  first  founded,  it  was  founded 
in  three  sections,  as  they  were  called :  the  third  was 
the  mass  of  the  members,  the  second  the  pupils  of 
the  Lodge,  the  first  the  great  Lodge  itself,  the  Mas- 
ters of  the  Wisdom.  So  you  may  read  in  its  his- 
tory as  to  its  original  foundation,  as  to  the  way  it 
was  organized  in  those  early  days  of  the  movement. 
Founded  by  the  Masters  through  their  messenger. 
Helena  Petrovna  Blavatsky,  organized  by  their 
servant,  Henry  Steele  Olcott,  according  to  the  will 
of  the  Masters  it  was  organized  with  Them  as  the 
first  section,  the  second  the  pupils,  the  third  the  men 
from  the  outer  world  who  entered.  That  was  swept 


The  Theosophical  Society  83 

away.  Many  came  in  who  did  not  understand  the 
meaning  of  the  Society,  and  doubted  the  existence 
of  the  Masters,  and  then  They  declared  that  They 
would  withdraw  from  the  Society  and  leave  it  to 
steer  its  own  way.  And  what  They  said  They  did ; 
and  the  two  upper  sections  disappeared,  and  only  the 
third  was  left  to  carry  on  the  work.  So  things  re- 
mained, with  the  establishment  that  H.  P.  B.  men- 
tions in  the  Key  to  Theosophy  of  what  was  called 
the  "  Esoteric  Section  " — until  the  death  of  our  dear 
President-Founder.  Then  once  more  the  choice 
was  put  before  the  Society :  "  Will  you  stand  before 
the  world  accepting  the  nominee  of  the  Masters  as 
your  Chief,  or  will  you  choose  your  own  man  or 
woman,  and  leave  the  Masters'  nominee  aside?" 
And  the  Society  answered  by  an  overwhelming  ma- 
jority— far  more  than  the  two-thirds  vote  required 
for  the  election  of  the  President;  it  welcomed  the 
nominee  of  the  Masters,  and  gladly  gave  the  con- 
stitutional sanction  to  that  which  had  come  to  it 
from  above.  Only  a  few  months  passed  over  before 
the  first  and  the  second  sections  were  again  estab- 
lished, so  that  to-day  we  who  know  look  to  the  Mas- 
ters as  the  first  section  of  Their  Society,  and  Their 
life  is  ever  spreading  through  it,  and  making  it 
strong  to  know  and  to  endure.  There  you  find  what 
to  me,  at  least,  is  its  meaning.  Worthless  would  be 
a  Society,  from  the  spiritual  standpoint,  which  did 
not  bear  some  such  relation  to  the  great  White 
Lodge. 


84        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

And  its  purposes?  Well,  here  again,  naturally, 
differences  of  opinion  will  arise.  But  not  on  the 
first — Brotherhood.  We  do  not  pretend  to  estab- 
lish a  Brotherhood.  A  Brotherhood  of  man  exists 
by  virtue  of  the  one  life  which  develops  in  all  alike. 
There  is  no  stone  in  the  road,  there  is  no  plant  grow- 
ing out  of  the  earth,  there  is  no  animal  that  breathes 
the  breath  of  life,  there  is  no  human  being  in  whom 
intelligence  is  developed,  that  is  not  rooted  in  the 
One  Life,  and  does  not  draw  its  existence  from  Him. 
Remember  the  words  of  the  great  Scripture  of  the 
Gita,  where  it  is  written :  "  There  is  nothing,  mov- 
ing nor  unmoving,  that  can  exist  bereft  of  Me." 
Nothing  can  exist  in  God's  world  save  by  God  Him- 
self. There  is  none  other  life  but  His  life,  none 
other  consciousness  than  His  Consciousness,  none 
other  will  save  His  Will,  in  course  of  evolution  in 
us.  You  are  willing  to  recognize  that  in  the  highest 
Deva ;  you  are  willing  to  see  it  in  the  loftiest  Arch- 
angel ;  I  tell  you  that  if  God  were  not  in  the  grain 
of  dust,  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  He  is  in 
the  loftiest  Archangel,  for  all  are  but  as  passing 
shadows  in  the  eyes  of  the  ETERNAL,  fragmentary 
manifestations  of  His  own  inexhaustible  life.  On 
that  is  based  universal  Brotherhood.  Who  are  we 
that  we  should  make  it — we  children  of  a  day,  we 
who  only  live  by  Him  ?  We  are  not  so  proud  as  to 
pretend  to  make  the  Brotherhood  that  lives  in  and 
by  the  Eternal  One  alone.  We  only  recognize  it, 
and  by  recognizing  it  we  hope  to  spread  the  recogni- 


The  Theosophical  Society  85 

tion  of  the  Brotherhood  among  men.  That  is  our 
humble  task.  A  nucleus  we  say;  not  even  the 
nucleus,  but  only  a  nucleus  of  universal  Brother- 
hood; for,  just  as  the  nucleus  of  the  cell  is  that 
through  which  the  life-forces  manifest,  so  do  the 
life-forces  that  build  this  great  Brotherhood  seek  to 
manifest  through  the  Theosophical  Society,  and 
every  one  who  comes  amongst  us  is  added  to  the 
nucleus,  and  one  more  child  of  man  is  recognized 
as  united  with  the  whole.  So  our  purpose  is  pri- 
marily to  spread  the  recognition  of  Brotherhood, 
based  on  the  recognition  of  the  one  and  only  life. 
And  that  is  why,  because  it  is  a  common  doctrine 
among  Hindus,  Dr.  Miller,  as  I  told  some  of  you 
the  other  day,  quoted  as  the  great  debt  of  the  world 
to  Hinduism  the  doctrine  of  the  immanence  of  God 
— that  God  is  in  everything — and  therefore  the 
solidarity  of  man.  There  is  no  other  solidarity 
but  that  in  Brotherhood.  Intellect  divides  us;  de- 
sires divide  us ;  material  possessions  divide  us ;  every- 
thing divides  us  but  the  one  spiritual  life  which  we 
have  in  common;  and  so  we  realize  that  only  by 
recognition  of  that  life  can  recognition  of  the 
Brotherhood  be  gained,  and  in  declaring  the  im- 
manence of  God  we  also  declare  the  Brotherhood 
of  man.  That  then  is  our  first  purpose. 

The  next,  to  teach  the  brotherhood  of  religions. 
Religions  have  been  the  greatest  cause  of  strife  in 
all  the  world.  It  used  not  to  be  so  in  the  older  world. 
Of  old  its  religions  were  national.  Every  nation 


86        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

had  its  own  faith,  or  a  group  of  nations  united  in 
one.  There  were  many  faiths,  and  God  had  many 
names;  no  man  wanted  to  fight  his  neighbor's  re- 
ligion unless  he  was  fighting  to  seize  his  neighbor's 
country;  and  desertion  of  the  religion  of  his 
country  was  regarded  more  as  treason  to  the  State 
than  as  heresy  in  matters  of  opinion.  Difficulty 
only  began  when  a  religion  arose  which  claimed  to  be 
a  unique  revelation  and  to  cast  doubt  on  the  other 
religions  of  the  world,  while  claiming  supremacy 
for  itself.  Then  came  persecutions  and  hatreds  and 
struggles,  the  use  of  the  sword  as  an  instrument 
for  making  a  man  believe — the  most  unsuitable  in- 
strument ever  devised  by  the  folly  and  cruelty  of 
man.  And  so  now  we  reproclaim  the  ancient  teach- 
ing that  all  religions  are  branches  of  one  tree,  the 
tree  of  divine  Wisdom,  and  that  just  as  this  banyan 
tree  throws  down  its  roots  and  starts  afresh  from 
every  root  that  is  struck  into  the  earth,  so  it  is  true 
of  every  branch  of  the  divine  Wisdom,  that  it  sends 
down  roots  into  the  soil  of  the  human  heart  and 
makes  a  new  center  whence  a  new  branch  spreads 
further.  For  the  divine  Wisdom  is  the  spreading 
banyan  tree,  and  the  great  Lodge  itself  the  trunk 
from  which  the  branches  come  forth  and  strike 
their  roots  into  the  world.  And  truly  indeed  is  it 
the  tree  of  life  whose  leaves  are  for  the  healing  of 
the  nations.  Human  brotherhood,  brotherhood  of 
religions — there  you  have  two  of  our  purposes, 
and  our  function  is  to  spread  these  over  the  world. 


The  Theosophical  Society  87 

Then  comes  another  purpose,  and  that  next  pur- 
pose is  to  substitute  Idealism  for  materialism,  to 
substitute  science  for  blind  credulity,  to  substitute 
knowledge  for  faith,  to  substitute  Mysticism  for 
formalism. 

The  other  day  we  had  a  letter  from  England, 
telling  us  that  a  Roman  Catholic  priest,  introduced 
to  a  lady  who  was  a  Theosophist,  made  the  remark- 
able statement :  "  Well,  materialism  is  dead  and 
buried,  and  that's  due  to  your  lot."  I  don't  say  the 
phrase  was  very  poetical,  but  it  was  very  expressive, 
and  that  a  Roman  Catholic  priest  should  declare 
that  the  death  and  burial  of  materialism  in  the 
West  was  due  to  Theosophy,  shows  that  we  have 
carried  out  that  part  at  least  of  our  mission. 

To  substitute  Mysticism  for  formalism.  Look 
again  over  the  western  world  and  see  how  Mysti- 
cism is  making  its  way,  is  reviving  the  ancient 
Churches  of  Christendom  and  giving  them  new 
strength,  new  life  and  new  unity  among  themselves. 
The  mystic  view  which  substitutes  the  authority  of 
the  God  within  for  that  of  the  religion  without — 
that  is  another  of  the  purposes  of  the  Theosophical 
Society  and  it  discharges  its  function  as  it  carries 
out  that  work. 

It  substitutes  science  for  credulity — not  the  sci- 
ence of  phenomena,  which  is  already  in  admirable 
hands,  which  is  being  pursued  by  what  Clifford  well 
called  "  the  tireless  patience  of  the  investigator," 
and  is  advancing  with  giant  strides.  The  marvelous 


88        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

work  done  in  the  study  of  the  phenomena  of  our 
world ;  the  advances  made  by  the  efforts  of  scientific 
men;  the  splendid  light  they  have  thrown  upon  the 
workings  of  nature — all  this  is  being  admirably  well 
done ;  and  while  we  cannot  forget  that  one  or  two  of 
the  most  eminent  of  those  discoverers  have  been 
members  of  our  Society — while  we  cannot  forget 
that  Mr.  William  Crookes,  now  Sir  William,  drew 
from  the  teachings  of  the  Master  the  great  ideas 
which  made  him  teach  the  genesis  of  the  elements, 
and  led  him  to  be  one  of  the  greatest  lights  of  the 
scientific  world  of  to-day — still  we  gladly  give  to 
that  noble  band  of  scientists  full  credit  for  their 
marvelous  discoveries,  and  thank  them  for  the  self- 
denial  and  labor  which  have  illumined  modern 
thought  with  the  light  of  modern  science. 

Our  special  work  is  to  give  to  science  the  great 
help  of  bringing  within  reach  other  worlds  than  the 
physical  (for  they  are  material  worlds  as  much  as 
the  physical  world  is  material),  pointing  to  the  pos- 
sible development  of  new  faculties  whereby  those 
worlds  shall  be  observed  by  scientific  methods; 
bringing  them  the  results  of  the  discoveries  we  have 
thus  made,  as  when  we  issued  the  book,  Occult 
Chemistry,  not  expecting  scientists  to  accept  it,  be- 
cause some  of  us  have  seen  it,  but  placing  it  on 
record,  so  that  when  the  science  of  fifty  years  hence 
has  discovered  what  we  have  seen,  they  may  see 
that  the  Theosophical  Society  was  the  pioneer  even 
in  material  science,  even  in  the  study  of  phenomena. 


The  Theosophical  Society  89 

But  far  more  precious  than  that  is  the  real  sci- 
ence, the  science  of  the  soul,  the  science  of  the 
Spirit.  Well  is  it  to  study  the  phenomena  of  the 
changing  world,  but  far  better  is  it  to  study  the 
truth  of  the  unchanging  Spirit,  and  to  know  the. 
relation  of  man  to  God  and  of  God  to  His  universe 
at  large.  The  science  of  the  Spirit  is  as  accurate, 
as  definite,  as  clear  as  any  science  of  phenomena, 
and  it  has  been  the  glory  of  Theosophy  to  carry 
that  science  to  the  West  and  to  revive  that  science 
in  the  East. 

I  do  not  pretend  that  we  have  brought  it  to  you ; 
but  you  had  forgotten  it.  Is  it  no  service  if,  when 
people  have  lived  long  in  their  family  house  and 
there  is  some  old  chest  covered  with  dust  and  put 
away  in  some  out-house  where  no  one  goes,  to  go 
to  that  out-house,  open  the  chest,  take  out  the  fam- 
ily jewels  covered  with  dust,  clear  away  the  dust, 
and  give  them  back  to  the  family  that  owns  but 
has  forgotten  them,  so  that  they  may  wear  them 
in  all  their  beauty  in  the  face  of  the  world?  That 
has  been  the  service  rendered  by  Theosophy  to 
eastern  lands,  where  the  jewels  were  forgotten,  but 
have  again  been  brought  to  light. 

It  is  written  in  an  Upanishat  that  a  man  may 
walk  over  a  field  not  knowing  of  the  gold  that  lies 
beneath  his  feet;  so  has  the  divine  Wisdom  spread 
by  the  Society  opened  up  the  vein  of  gold  beneath 
the  earth  on  which  you  were  treading,  and  shown 
you  the  treasures  of  golden  ore  that  lie  in  the  depths 


90         Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

of  your  hearts.  Such  then  is  the  work,  the  purpose 
of  this  movement. 

Then  we  come  to  another  purpose  which  many 
amongst  us  do  not  yet  accept,  but  which  is  none 
the  less  true  for  some  of  us :  To  serve  as  a  means 
of  collecting  together  materials  suitable  for  the 
sixth  sub-race,  that  out  of  it  the  sixth  Root  Race 
may  grow.  The  researches  of  the  past  show  us 
that  Vaivasvata  Manu  gathered  the  materials  for 
His  fifth,  or  Aryan,  Race  out  of  the  fifth  sub-race 
of  the  Atlanteans,  on  one  of  the  islands  left  by  the 
huge  convulsion  of  two  hundred  thousand  years  ago. 
He  gathered  them  together ;  He  led  them  away  from 
their  home.  Gradually  He  led  them  upwards  into 
Central  Asia,  far  to  the  North,  to  the  borders  of 
the  Northern  Sea.  There  He  kept  them;  there  He 
trained  them  for  a  while;  took  them,  after  some 
years,  to  the  Gobi  Sea,  wherein  the  White  Island 
was  situated,  and  there  they  settled  for  long,  long 
years  of  growth. 

From  that,  the  beginning  of  the  Root  Race,  He 
gradually  sent  out  sub-race  after  sub-race;  the 
first,  the  Root  stock  itself,  ultimately  came  down 
into  India;  the  second  spread  into  Egypt  and 
Arabia  and  South  Africa;  the  third  spread  into 
Persia ;  the  fourth,  the  Kelts,  into  Greece  and  South- 
ern Europe  for  the  most  part;  the  fifth,  the 
Teutonic,  more  to  the  North,  and  the  sixth  is  yet 
to  come.  It  is  already  appearing  in  America,  where 
H.  P.  B.  told  us  to  look  out  for  the  appearing;  and 


The  Theosophical  Society  91 

you  may  read  in  the  report  to  the  Government  of  the 
leading  ethnologist  of  America  the  signs  and  marks 
of  the  development  of  a  new  type  which  will  be  the 
American  type  of  the  future,  or  one  of  the  Amer- 
ican types. 

The  sixth  sub-race  is  gradually  to  be  built  up, 
and  our  Theosophical  Society  is_  the  gathering  to- 
gether of  the  souls  that  have  taken  part  in  the  found- 
ing of  other  sub-races,  and  will  be  called  upon  ere 
long  to  take  part  in  the  founding  of  the  sixth.  Out 
of  that  the  sixth  Root  Race  will  grow,  when  the 
new  Manu — He  whom  we  know  as  the  Master  M. — 
will  come  to  build  His  colony,  as  the  Lord  Vaivas- 
vata  Manu  built  His  in  days  gone  by.  Scores  of 
thousands  of  years  will  pass  away,  probably,  ere 
that  Race  will  be  ready  for  its  new  continent,  and 
the  continent  will  be  ready  for  it.  But  already  in 
the  Pacific — where  H.  P.  B.,  before  there  were  any 
signs  of  it,  said  the  continent  of  the  sixth  Root 
Race  was  to  arise — already  it  is  arising,  as  the 
geographers  tell  us.  Volcanic  outbursts  making 
islands,  throwing  up  mountain  peaks — until  to-day 
in  scientific  associations  they  discuss  the  danger  of 
the  uprising  of  a  new  continent,  and  the  huge  tidal 
waves  that  they  fear  may  desolate  the  earth.  Be 
not  afraid;  Nature  is  not  going  to  move  in  such  a 
hurry;  Nature  takes  her  time  over  her  work.  I 
dare  say  there  will  be  some  tidal  waves,  sweeping 
away  perhaps  hundreds  or  thousands  of  people ; 
but  the  Race  will  not  die  and  cannot  die,  and  only 


92        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

the  old  bodies  will  be  slain  that  the  men  in  them 
may  pass  into  better  bodies  to  live  under  nobler 
surroundings.  I  cannot  go  into  details,  but  many 
of  you  know  the  details  of  which  I  am  just  giving 
the  rough  outlines. 

This  is  one  of  the  purposes  of  the  Theosophical 
Society,  as  I  was  told  by  the  Master,  who  is  to  make 
this  gathering  of  a  Race.  He  said  that  you  could 
not  to-day  segregate  people  as  they  could  be  segre- 
gated in  the  past;  that  you  could  not  lead  people 
into  some  far-off  country  and  shut  them  up  there 
from  the  races  of  the  world.  Steamboats,  trains, 
other  methods  of  communication — to  which  now  are 
added  aeroplanes — make  such  a  physical  segrega- 
tion impossible.  It  is  segregation  of  thought  rather 
than  of  bodies,  and  the  thought  is  Human  Brother- 
hood, which  is  to  be  embodied  in  our  sixth  Root 
Race;  a  co-operative  civilization  instead  of  a  com- 
petitive; a  brotherly  civilization  instead  of  the 
plunder  of  the  weak  by  the  strong. 

That  is  the  broad  idea,  and  the  Theosophical  So- 
ciety has  that  for  one  of  its  purposes,  and,  whether 
many  members  believe  it  or  not,  it  matters  not,  since 
it  is  part  of  the  divine  Plan. 

And  then  another  purpose,  which  is  only  believed 
in  as  yet  by  a  small  minority,  is  that  it  is  to  serve  as 
the  herald  of  the  coming  Teacher  and  prepare  His 
way  in  our  mortal  world.  Not  by  one  voice,  as  by 
that  of  John  the  Baptist  in  the  past,  but  by  thousands 
of  voices  from  many  lands  is  the  coming  of  the 


The  Theosophical  Society  93 

great  Teacher  to-day  preparing.  By  hearts  of  love, 
full  of  devotion,  by  study  of  the  signs  of  the  times 
which  leads  to  knowledge,  more  and  more  of  our 
members  are  realizing  that  this  also  is  one  of  the 
purposes  of  the  Society,  and  this  function  is  also  to 
be  discharged.  Now  the  Teacher  will  come  and 
go;  the  great  Teacher  will  appear  as  he  did  in 
Judaea,  and  again  pass  away  from  earth — I  hope  not 
by  cruel  murder  as  then  in  the  past.  And  in  order 
that  a  welcome  may  be  secure,  in  order  that  His 
sacred  Person  may  not  be  slain  by  an  angry  mob 
or  a  cruel  ruler,  the  way  is  being  prepared  by  His 
messengers,  so  that  He  may  dwell  longer,  if  He 
will,  in  the  human  world. 

Such  messages  have  before  been  given,  but  never 
have  they  been  received  by  a  majority  of  the  men 
of  the  time.  We  are  told  a  message  about  a  local 
flood  was  sent  out  in  the  days  of  Noah;  but  only 
Noah  and  his  own  family  escaped  in  the  ark,  for  all 
others  mocked  and  jeered  at  the  message,  until  the 
flood  was  upon  them  and  it  was  too  late  to  escape. 

In  the  days  of  the  Christ  Himself,  a  few  faithful 
hearts  proclaimed  His  coming,  but  the  mass  of  the 
people  would  not  have  Him,  because  He  was  not 
shaped  into  their  likeness,  and  did  not  fill  up  the 
crude  thought-form  which  they  had  created  for  His 
embodiment. 

I  know  not  if  the  world  has  grown  wiser  through 
the  last  two  thousand  years.  I  know  not  if,  when 
again  the  Supreme  Teacher  comes,  He  will  find  the- 


94        Theosophy  and  the  Theosophical  Society 

people  as  blind,  as  foolish,  as  they  were  when  He 
trod  the  roads  of  Judaea  and  was  despised  and  re- 
jected of  men.  He  Himself  said  that  every  religion 
slew  its  own  prophets  and  built  sepulchres  for  the 
prophets  of  past  generations.  It  may  be  that  the 
world  will  again  do  that;  it  may  be  that  here  in, 
India,  the  people  who  revere  Shri  Shankaracharya — 
and  rightly  revere  that  mightiest  Teacher — will  cast 
stones,  as  it  were,  again,  when  the  World-Teacher 
comes  among  them.  It  may  be  that  the  Christians, 
with  their  particular  thought- form  as  to  the  nature 
of  the  Christ,  will  have  naught  to  say  when  His 
exquisite  presence  again  illuminates  the  darkness  of 
our  world.  Who  may  tell? 

After  He  has  gone,  the  Theosophical  Society  will 
carry  on  His  work,  will  spread  His  message,  will 
strive  to  labor  along  the  lines  He  shall  lay  down. 
But  to-day  before  He  comes ;  to-day,  while  still  His 
message  is  not  accepted ;  we  now  proclaim  His  com- 
ing and,  like  our  predecessors,  we  declare  that  He 
is  near,  well-nigh  at  the  door. 

You  may  say :  "  What  right  have  you  to  pro- 
claim it  ?  "  So  said  your  predecessors  to  my  prede- 
cessors, Messengers  of  the  same  great  Lodge.  You 
say :  "  It  is  bold,  proud,  audacious,  to  say  you  know 
what  others  know  not."  But  such  has  ever  been  the 
message  of  the  Messengers,  and  rejection  has  ever 
been  the  fate  awaiting  them.  Why  should  it  be 
otherwise  with  the  modern  Mesr'  •  ~  -rs?  why  should 
they  be  believed  when  their  prea~ -ebsors  were  re- 


The  Theosophical  Society  95 

jected?  why  should  they  be  accepted  when  the  world 
aforetime  refused  to  admit  the  existence  of  the 
Lodge  or  to  welcome  its  greater  Messengers? 

Nevertheless  we  who  know  are  bound  to  speak; 
none  the  less  we  who  know  are  bound  to  pass  on 
the  message  we  have  received.  We  are  not  the 
King,  but  we  are  His  heralds ;  and  no  earthly  voice 
shall  silence  the  mouths  which  have  been  told  to 
proclaim  His  coming. 


DEC 


This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 

1930 


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